The Yugoslav ambassador to the Holy See and the Papal Nuncio in Yugoslavia both indicated yesterday that Belgrade may well respond positively to the Pope's call in his Easter Sunday Urbi et Orbi address for the establishment of a humanitarian aid corridor to ease the plight of Kosovo refugees.
In an interview with the Milan daily, Corriere della Sera, Yugoslavia's ambassador to the Vatican, Mr Dojcilo Maslovaric, said he expected his government to respond "positively and quickly" to the Pope's call, adding, however, that the humanitarian corridor could not be overseen by NATO troops.
Mr Maslovaric said a preliminary agreement to set up such a corridor had already been arrived at last week when the Vatican Foreign Minister, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, was in Belgrade. "One thing is sure, though, and that is that a humanitarian corridor cannot be guaranteed by NATO troops. As far as we are concerned, it has to be a kind of peace mission along the lines of that undertaken by the OSCE observers."
The Italian government yesterday reaffirmed its view that every effort should be made to keep the Kosovo refugees in the Balkans region rather than moving them on to other European countries. Speaking at a meeting in UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) headquarters in Geneva, the junior Foreign Minister, Mr Umberto Ranieri, said:
"Italy believes . . . that every effort should be made so that the Kosovo refugees are given food and shelter in the region and the surrounding countries . . . This is indispensable if the refugees are to keep alive any prospect of returning to Kosovo and so that the link between them and their homeland is not definitively broken.
"We are opposed to the idea of relocating refugees in countries far from the area. Serious consideration should be given to the British proposal for the setting up of a protectorate in Macedonia which might be able to accommodate a large proportion of the refugees."
Last night the Italian government's emergency relief programme, Rainbow Mission, which started last week, continued apace with the navy ship, the San Giorgio, sailing from Bari headed for the Albanian port of Durres.
Under the first stage of the programme, camps for up to 25,000 refugees are currently being set up near Kukes on the Albanian border with Kosovo, while the San Giorgio was transporting a 180-strong military medical team which will be setting up a field hospital near Durres.