Macedonia `on brink of disaster' with 140,000 Kosovan refugees

Macedonia is "on the brink of disaster" and needs more help to cope with some 140,000 Kosovan refugees, the Foreign Minister, Mr Alexandar Dimitrov, said yesterday.

UNHCR officials will hold meetings with members of the Macedonian government today. Camps are overcrowded, conditions have deteriorated, and the authorities are refusing to allow new camps to be opened.

A UNHCR proposal to build three additional camps, announced last Friday, has been turned down. Private landowners will not allow the overcrowded camps at Brazda and Stenkovec to be extended.

Latest figures indicate there are 25,000 refugees in Brazda and approximately 15,000 in Stenkovec. Mr Ron Redmond of the UNHCR said last night they might be able to "squeeze" another 600 into Stenkovec.

The Radusa camp, built for 1,000, has 1,500 refugees. Bojane, equipped to cater for 2,000, now has 3,200 refugees, 1,000 of whom arrived yesterday.

As the UNHCR broadened the range of its evacuation, 300 refugees were sent to Poland yesterday. The organisation is reconsidering its policy of keeping the refugees close to Kosovo, because of overcrowding at the camps and NATO intelligence that at least 20,000 more refugees are wandering towards the border. Mr Redmond said it was becoming clear to the UNHCR that evacuation to third countries was the only remaining safety valve. This could mean a major change in UNHCR policy which would see countries such as Ireland being requested to take in refugees.

It was cold and crowded at Stenkovec yesterday. There is still a lot of mud after weekend rains and a sequence of large muddy ponds in the centre of the camp.

Many of the refugees live in medieval-like "streets" of lined tents, each side of which could be touched by the average person outstretching his/her arms. These streets are medieval-like in other ways also. Most have open drains running through them, and each tent is circled by a channel linked to the drains. There are also cess pits at intervals.

As Ram Redep (50) told me how he and 110 Albanians spent two weeks in an underground cellar in Pristina before they were discovered by Serb militia and told to get out of Kosovo, a woman was hanging washed clothes on tree branches behind him.

While economics student Lulzim Haxhiijaj (19) described seeing "many, many dead bodies" as he left Pristina, and how a body was deliberately burned by Serb police in front of a train-load of refugees, a woman was soaping a pair of jeans on a sheet of plastic nearby.

Lulzim's father is in Germany, a brother is in Sweden, another brother is with the KLA in Kosovo. He would like to be in the KLA. "Everyone is unhappy here. We want to go home," he said, while still grateful for some shelter.

Everywhere there are small children. They have improvised swings from tree branches, across tent entrances, wherever there is a supported cross bar. The smoke from fires is one of the dominant smells in the camp.

And then there is that other pervasive smell - the perpetual stench from lavatories.