The Independent launched the DEC appeal with its readers last week, prompting a massive response.
The joint appeal has been organised on behalf of the British Red Cross, Christian Aid, Cafod, CARE International UK, Children’s Aid Direct, Concern Worldwide, Help The Aged, Merlin, Oxfam, Save The Children, Tearfund and World Vision, to prevent the public being bombarded with separate appeals.Charity heads said the scale of the disaster was such that a planned joint effort was needed to make sure the aid got to the people who most needed it as soon as possible.Donations can be made to the appeal on 0870 6060900 or 0990 222233. The total raised by the Disasters Emergency Committee has now topped pounds 7m. Donors have been told that pounds 5 will buy a blanket, pounds 10 a hygiene pack, pounds 30 will keep a family fed for a month and pounds 250 will buy a tent to house several families. There was also speculation that the shooting may have been carried out by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army.. THE INDEPENDENT’S Kosovo appeal yesterday reached pounds 340,000 – up more than pounds 90,000 on the previous day. “The British Government’s thinking, as well as that of myself, is that it is best to host refugees in the area neighbouring their own country,” Mrs Ogata said.The tension in Macedonia took a new and potentially damaging turn yesterday when the army confirmed a 27-year-old soldier was shot dead in a fire fight with unknown ambushers shooting from inside Kosovo.At first there was speculation it may have been Serb forces. I’d like Medicines Sans Frontieres to join us in putting this into practice,” she said.Plans to airlift refugees to foreign countries, including Britain, appear to have been suspended.
Between 120,000 and 130,000 refugees from Kosovo are still inside Macedonia, about half of them billeted with ethnic Albanian families in the predominantly Albanian western part of the republic.Mrs Ogata conceded that “we have learnt many lessons”, but said it would be “a matter of days” before the situation was under control.”Criticism is being given freely by many people many times. At the same time I am extremely concerned about the situation over the border with Kosovo,” she added. She said she has no means of helping those Albanians who were forcibly returned to Kosovo by the Serbs when Belgrade closed the border.”I cannot do anything right now because I can’t go into Kosovo without security being assured,” she said.She had spent a day visiting refugee camps and talking to political leaders in the Macedonian capital, Skopje.”I am helpless. “Without registration, refugees are not individuals and have no rights and families cannot be reunified …
families were and still are being separated and transported to camps and other countries, sometimes without consent.”MSF is extremely concerned that the minimum standards for the assistance and protection of refugees have been ignored,” their statement said.Aid workers and Nato soldiers on the ground privately have been making similar complaints for days, since the exodus began to choke the borders.They say the UNHCR is disorganised and has left the burden of caring for the refugees to the Macedonians, whose Slav-dominated government wants only to get rid of them, and to Nato, which is a military, not a humanitarian organisation.”Nato is neither responsible nor able to co-ordinate humanitarian relief activities for refugees – nor should it be.”The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, admitted yesterday that it will be days before order is restored in Macedonian refugee camps. It accused the Commissioner of failing to monitor the numbers and whereabouts of displaced Kosovars, and of allowing the Macedonian government to deport them against their will, splitting families.
“Many refugees are not registered,” the organisation said. The first attack was on a military vehicle compound in southern Kosovo and the second was against military trucks in the west Both were successful, he said.. THE AID organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres accused the UN High Commissioner for Refugees yesterday of failing in its duty towards refugees from Kosovo, as criticism grows of the UN’s role in the Balkans disaster. Then on Tuesday, Air Commodore Wilby had to apologise for a bomb going astray during a raid on Aleksinac the previous night, killing five civilians and wounding another.At yesterday’s Nato briefing, Air Commodore Wilby said that after some success on Thursday morning, “the weather has turned against us”, affecting operations. He also said that Serb forces appeared to be building up in the north of Kosovo.In London, General Sir Charles Guthrie, Chief of the Defence Staff, said that 10 RAF Harriers had hit two groups of vehicles on Thursday.
It has been claimed that the plant was also used for arms and ammunition production.For 12 days of the campaign Nato spokesmen stated with pride that there had been virtually no civilian casualties, using this as an indication of the accuracy of its attacks. If any “collateral damage” had been caused, Slobodan Milosevic’s propaganda machine would have made the most of it, they said. Nato has certainly not caused the reported widespread and random damage which we believe has been orchestrated by Serbian forces,” he said on Thursday.Yesterday’s admission came as Serbian state television reported that a Nato air attack on a car factory in the central Serbian town of Kragujevac on Thursday night had left 124 people injured, 24 of them seriously. Air Commodore Wilby suggested that some of the damage had been caused by Serb forces for propaganda purposes.”I can absolutely assure you that while Nato has attacked military targets around Pristina, and one very carefully targeted headquarters… At least 10 civilians were said to have been killed in attacks the previous night.Serb minders and local people interviewed said that all the wreckage had been caused by alliance bombs, but this was flatly denied by Nato at the time. In a silent and deserted city centre they saw that – as well as the exchange – the post office, the largest bank and a row of civilian homes had been hit.
