United Nations Daily Highlights, 99-05-03

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From: The United Nations Home Page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.org

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Monday, 3 May, 1999

Latest Developments

HEADLINES

• Evacuations of Kosovars from refugee camps too slow to relieve overcrowding -- UNHCR.
• UN Secretary-General welcomes release of US soldiers by Belgrade but says more hard work lies ahead.
• UN human rights commissioner visits Kosovo refugee camps for first-hand look at rights issues.
• UN health agency discounts reports of Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo.

UNHCR said 800 more refugees were expected to be evacuated Monday -- far short of the daily target of 2,000.

Meanwhile, some 6,000 new refugees had poured into Blace in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. UNHCR field workers reported the beginning of the "Balkan summer" and said many new arrivals were fainting from the heat.

On Sunday, an estimated 6,700 refugees had left Kukes for other areas in Albania in an effort to relieve the congestion in that region, UNHCR reported. Many left in a fleet of 362 private vehicles while NATO trucks and the Albanian army also assisted in the departures.

More than 3,100 refugees, however, continued to cross into Kukes through the Morini border. Some of the new arrivals said that Serbian military forces were going from street to street and house to house telling people they had to leave. One group of around 400 long-term residents of Prizren, however, had been reportedly instructed by Serbian authorities to go back, possibly to be used as human shields in the event of a NATO attack, UNHCR said.

(Visit UNHCR's for in-depth coverage.)

"We still have a lot of work to do on the political and diplomatic front before I can say that we are on the verge of a deal," Mr. Annan said in an exchange with reports upon arriving at UN Headquarters in New York.

The Secretary-General said he expected to meet soon with Viktor Chernomyrdin, the Russian Federation's special envoy to Yugoslavia, to continue discussions on Kosovo begun in Moscow last week.

Meanwhile, the Secretary-General also said that he would be taking a decision very shortly on the selection of two envoys to the Balkans.

Mrs. Robinson's comments came in a meeting that she had in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia with human rights and humanitarian non- governmental organizations, as well as Kosovar academics and journalists who have sought refuge there, a UNHCHR spokesman said.

The High Commissioner is in the Balkans to make a first-hand appraisal of the human rights issues and to assess the co- ordination of the monitoring of human rights violations.

On Sunday, Mrs. Robinson visited several camps in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and spoke with a number of refugees, the spokesman said. One Kosovar Albanian told her harrowing stories of their flight from Kosovo, while the testimonies of refugees in Brazda echoed the reports the High Commissioner had been receiving on the systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing being carried out by Yugoslav forces in Kosovo.

Contrary to some news reports, however, WHO said it has not identified the virus as Ebola. WHO was working with the French organization Medicins sans frontieres (Doctors without Borders) to fly samples to Johannesburg for analysis.

Meanwhile UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Sergio Vieira de Mello called on all parties in the conflict to support and actively facilitate efforts by WHO and Medicins sans frontieres to investigate this outbreak and ensure a prompt response.

Since the beginning of the year, 68 cases of viral haemorrhagic fever has been recorded to date, resulting in 63 deaths, according to WHO. Of the 63 deaths, 58 have been men between the ages of 15 and 35.

From the United Nations home page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.org

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