wfn.org | European bishop says money urgently needed to help refugees

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

March 30, 1999	News media contact: Thomas S.
McAnally*(615)742-5470*Nashville, Tenn. 10-21-71B{174}

By United Methodist News Service

Money to help feed and shelter ethnic Albanian refugees  is desperately
needed, and it is needed quickly, according to United Methodist Bishop
Heinrich Bolleter of Zurich, Switzerland, who oversees the church's work in
Central and Southern Europe.

In a March 30 telephone interview with United Methodist News Service,
Bolleter said he had just talked with a United Methodist who is vice
minister for foreign affairs in Macedonia. "Other European countries are
offering in-kind support such as medication," the bishop reported, "but
Macedonia would drown in medication and have no money to build installations
needed for shelter."

Shelter is the biggest problem for the tens of thousands of refugees,
Bolleter explained.  "Macedonia has no resources. The shelters they have are
filled with NATO troops."

Contributions may be made to United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR)
International Disaster Response # 982450-8. Checks, earmarked for "Kosovo
Emergency," may be placed in church collection plates or mailed directly to
UMCOR at 475 Riverside Drive, Room 330, New York, NY 10115. 

Bolleter had just returned from Bulgaria, where he said there is great fear
the war will spread throughout the Balkans region.  

"Everywhere I went, people, particularly young people, asked about the NATO
attacks in Serbia," he said. "They say the West has no real judgment about
the mentality in the Balkans. If you start to terrorize the Balkan people,
their reaction is revenge and inflexibility."

Asked how he viewed the crisis in the Kosovo, the bishop was quick to say he
had no solution. "For me, the most difficult things are the goals which were
set for the action of  NATO that could not be reached. The purpose was to
save Kosovo Albanians from genocide, and now we are in the midst of it
happening without any possibility of stopping it. We have to rethink our
approach." 

Serb reprisals against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have reportedly escalated
since NATO launched its air attacks. 
 
Since NATO attacks began March 24, between 80,000 and 100,000 ethnic
Albanian refugees have fled Kosovo, according to the U.N. relief agency.
NATO estimates that more than 500,000 ethnic Albanians - one-fourth of the
province's population - have been displaced in 13 months of clashes since
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic cracked down on ethnic Albanian
separatists.  

The western allies want Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to stop his
campaign against Kosovo's separatists and accept a peace plan that calls for
28,000 NATO troops to enforce the accord. That force would include 4,000
Americans. Milosevic's refusal to accept the peacekeeping force triggered
the NATO air strikes.

Ethnic Albanians make up 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people
inhabitants. Serbs, however, consider Kosovo theirs because it was the
birthplace of their culture before they lost it to the Ottoman Turks in the
14th century. Serbia regained the province shortly after World War I.  

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