The EU Humanitarian Affairs Commissioner, Ms Emma Bonino, was visibly moved yesterday as she walked among 366 ethnic Albanian refugees crammed into a crumbling Kosovo schoolhouse.
She had to kneel down to hear two small boys and their sister tell how their mother, forced out of their home by six months of fighting in the province, had died giving birth three days earlier.
"Our 14-year-old sister is taking care of us now. Dad went back to his house in our ruined village to do the harvesting," said one of the boys, eyes bloodshot with tears and exhaustion.
Walking over rotting wooden floors to the next room, with her entourage and journalists in tow, Ms Bonino asked a grandmother and her daughter with five small children what their greatest problems were.
"We don't have enough to eat, we give whatever we can to our children. We cannot wash our laundry and we haven't been able to wash ourselves for weeks," said the mother.
"We get bread, tomatoes and peppers from villagers here but we lack bread and salt and milk and there is the risk of epidemic," she said. The refugees Ms Bonino saw were overwhelmingly women with small children. She said it was clear that what she had heard and seen in Cirez, central Kosovo, and other wrecked towns and villages, added up to a recipe for disaster this winter unless the refugees could return home.
"I'm just warning the international community that there is no possibility on pure humanitarian grounds to overcome winter for all this population if there is no political solution," she told reporters in a part of Kosovo still held by separatist rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
The KLA has been ousted from most of its strongholds by a Serb offensive but sporadic fighting is still reported.
"If we still have the illusion that a lot of humanitarian aid will help people survive the winter adequately, my message is this is impossible without a political settlement," Ms Bonino said.
Ms Bonino said refugees driven from their homes by the Serb military offensive would not return home without human rights guarantees linked to a peace accord.
She said not enough international pressure had been exerted on Belgrade to halt its destructive onslaught against rebels in Kosovo. "If we care about people, there is really a very short time ahead of us if we want to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe," Ms Bonino said.
Ms Bonino returned to the Kosovo provincial capital, Pristina, later for talks with Deputy UN Refugee Commissioner, Mr Soren Jessen-Petersen, and ethnic Albanian political leader, Mr Ibrahim Rugova.
Earlier, she tried to visit a refugee clinic in a wooded area near Pagarosa, an hour south of Cirez, but turned back after a local KLA commander refused to let her bring in journalists.
Meanwhile, in Tirana, the Albanian Foreign Minister, Mr Paskal Milo, yesterday urged ethnic Albanian political groups in Kosovo to unite and said their divisions were undermining their international credibility.
"Divisions among Albanian political elements in Kosovo, which have deepened recently, have put it in a worse position than two or three months ago," Mr Milo said in an interview.