Extreme concern about the fate of ethnic Albanians remaining in Kosovo was expressed yesterday by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Mrs Sedako Ogata.
And underlining her fear, earlier in the day the British chief of defence staff, Gen Sir Charles Guthrie, said grim reports of atrocities by Yugoslav forces were emerging from Kosovo, including accounts of dead refugees' bodies being burned and buried by the truckload.
In one incident, it was claimed, there was a mass killing of 35 people in one village; in another, four truckloads of bodies were buried and one truckload burned, he said.
A fresh influx of people fleeing the terror was reported late last night by Albanian television, which said that tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians were trapped by Serb forces in central Kosovo and threatened with starvation. Ethnic Albanians in villages in the rural Upper Drenica region were pinning their hopes on rescue by the outside world.
"The population of this part of Drenica expects from the international community that it will open a corridor urgently and bring in food and medicine, because supplies have run out and the population is threatened with starvation," said the broadcast, monitored by the BBC.
Mrs Ogata told a packed press conference in Skopje that UN personnel could not go into Kosovo unless their security was assured and this was not forthcoming. As things stood, they were helpless.
Her main concern was with those driven back from the border by the Serbs and what may be happening to them. She did not know how many were turned back as the original numbers were only estimates, she said.
Mrs Ogata also said she had reached agreement with the Macedonian government for the commission to begin registering the refugees in the transit camps. This would help unite families and locate missing persons. The Macedonian government had also agreed to keep its borders open, she said. It had shown full co-operation.
NATO had also agreed to continue to supply whatever logistical help the commission might find necessary, she said. She said refugees were concerned that Macedonian police and military might take over control of the camps from NATO.
She was "well aware the refugees were more comfortable with NATO", but security in such cases "basically is the responsibility of host countries". However, when such a country did not have enough personnel it was possible to assist with outside forces, she said.
About 10,000 ethnic Albanian refugees missing after the chaotic dispersal of people from the Blace makeshift camp earlier this week had been found elsewhere in Macedonia and in Albania, a UN spokeswoman said.
Mrs Ogata said that all the refugees were "dying, yearning" to go home, she said, but some felt they could not go back. These latter might seek integration into Macedonian society or go to a third country, but repatriation was what the UNHCR sought and that those who did go elsewhere did so voluntarily.
Currently there are 44,000 refugees in the camps, and another 60,000 are staying with families in Macedonia. Many other residents of Skopje spent yesterday marking the Orthodox Christian Good Friday.
At the incense-filled church of St Kliment Ohrioski, worshippers brought eggs to a highly ornate table, covered by a curtained canopy. A gospel with gilt covers rested on it, as did elaborately painted eggs and bank notes. Each person as they approached the table kissed the gospel, donated an egg or whatever money they could afford, then crawled beneath the table to be blessed with holy water by one of two priests on the other side.
The parish priest, Father Methody, said he did not believe the war would spill over into Macedonia, but that Orthodox Christians were very angry that a ceasefire had not been called for Easter. "We are all believers," he said, remembering some English from his years in Melbourne, Australia.
They didn't want any wars, he said, people must talk. All war was bad. And as for what was happening now? He gestured to the crucified Christ being kissed by the crowds and said, remembering His words on the first Good Friday: "Lord forgive them, for they know not what they do."
Kosovo was very important to the Serbs and the Serb Christians, he said. Kosovo was "the heart of their culture". Most of the main monasteries in the Serb Orthodox Church were based there, such as Gracanica which dates from the 12th century.
The patriarch of the Serb Orthodox Church was elected at Becka Topola in Kosovo, not Belgrade, he said. And lots of Serbs had to leave Kosovo in the early 80s and were replaced by Albanians.
As for Mr Slobodan Milosevic, he said he used to be communist leader "and might still have some of those ideas", but before the war all he knew about him was through the media. Now he believed he had become "one very big leader". The Serb, Russian and Macedonian Orthodox Christians "like [him] as leader", Father Methody said.
In the background as he spoke, a recording of a woman singing a melancholy hymn reverberated through the church: that still, sad music of humanity.
