Trip to Lipkova leaves mind scarred

Lipkova is a small ethnic Albanian village woven between foothills about 35 kilometres east of Skopje, Macedonia's capital. It is raining. There are clouds on the mountains. They reflect the mood of the people.

At the mosque exhausted refugees are being comforted. They had been rescued from the hills by local people who went searching for them on tractors. Now they are resting while accommodation is arranged. Up to 300 are said to have been brought in today.

Some have been journeying here for 28 days. They come from Becjunce, Ljubiste and Bogic, villages near the city of Vitina in south Kosovo, and from Vitina itself. It is about 30 kilometres north of the border with Macedonia.

They climbed mountains, through forests, from village to village en route here. They have also been through Malina high in the mountains on the Macedonian side of the border, and are some of the still missing thousands (estimated at 7,000) who have passed through that village this week.

According to Ajtene Bilalli (38) from Lipkova, who is organising accommodation locally for the women and children, the refugees stayed in villages they passed through overnight before heading off again the next day.

But frequently they were chased out by Serb police and militia, along with local ethnic Albanians.

The refugees say that seven of their number died on the journey, four children and three old men. One old man's body has been left on the mountain. There was nothing else they could do.

A refugee child at the mosque is unconscious. The baby is eight months old and, according to Ajtene, is paralysed. A four-year-old is being treated by a local doctor for exhaustion. He prescribes rest, having none of the necessary medication.

The refugees estimate that there are a further 17,000 people from Vitina and its surrounding villages in the mountains on the other side of the border, trying to get to Macedonia.

But what has caused the angry mood locally are reports that during the week Macedonian police directed the refugees out of Malina to other ethnic Albanian villages further down the mountain, such as Lipkova, but insisted they take the long route through the mountains rather than by road. Some had taken 101/2 hours to make the journey. They say a fit young person could do it in four.

"Are you Macedonian?", a group of local Albanian Macedonian youths ask a Macedonian man. He says he is. They tell him that one day they will be able to do what the Macedonian police did in Malina.

Other local people have gone up the hills into the mountains looking for more of the refugees. They believe there are some about two hours away by tractor.

Late Thursday night 500 refugees were taken from Malina to the Stenkovec camp. An elderly, very tanned, man there explained how he and his family, including 11 children, had been put out of their homes in Vitina a week ago by the Serbs. They walked for 15 hours through the mountains to Malina where they arrived five days ago.

He carried a three-month-old child most of the way. The children were all under six and belonged to his three sons, two of whom are in Germany.

At Malina people were sleeping 24 to a room in the houses, he said. On Friday local people brought them by horse down the dirt track to trucks, which then took them to Stenkovec.

In his days at Malina he had seen no Macedonian police whatsoever, nor was he aware of them having directed refugees across the mountains in the direction of Lipkova and other such villages.

AFP adds from Paris:

The World Bank is planning an emergency meeting in Paris next month of Macedonia's creditor countries.

Officials said the European Commission would also take part in the meeting on May 5th.

Macedonia's economy has crumbled as its main trade partner before the war was the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which accounted for 25 per cent of its exports.