As the Balkan refugee crisis reached breaking point yesterday in Macedonia, Ireland announced that the first group of 150 people to flee "ethnic cleansing" and war in Kosovo would begin to arrive in a fortnight.
The refugees, to consist mainly of large family groups currently in severely overcrowded camps in Macedonia, with priority also given to the ill, will be accommodated in large hostel-type accommodation in Cork and Kerry.
Refugees expected here will be selected over the next 10 days by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and will travel on a charter flight paid for by the organisation.
The announcement of the airlift of refugees to Ireland came as the UNHCR and Macedonian government both said the small Balkan country, which used to be part of Yugoslavia, could no longer cope with the refugee crisis and was unable to offer shelter to more people in existing camps.
At the start of this week, 3,500 new refugees entered Macedonia - the latest in a line of some 183,800 who have made the trek to safety since the start of the war against the Milosevic regime and its policy of "ethnic cleansing".
For the first time ethnic Albanians who had been living in Serbia, but outside the province of Kosovo, crossed into Macedonia as refugees yesterday. Tensions at the Lojane crossing yesterday seemed likely to explode as local people tried to take the refugees into their homes but were prevented by Macedonian police.
Most of the refugees were forced onto buses and taken to the Stenkovec camp. However, about 300 broke through police lines and disappeared quickly into the countryside.
At Blace in Macedonia a further 3,000 refugees arrived yesterday. In scenes reminiscent of earlier grim days of the crisis it was being arranged last night that hundreds if not thousands would sleep in the open under plastic. Meanwhile in Albania, the UN has begun the mass movement of Kosovo refugees from their muddy camps around the Kosovan border as NATO gears up for a new phase in the bombardment of Serbia.
To speed the movement, Albania has lifted its "tractor ban", which prevented the thousands of refugees who came out of Kosovo on tractor-trailers from moving south along the main road. The government had feared creating monumental traffic jams on the single, deteriorating, road south to the coast.
In south-eastern Serbia at least 20 civilians were reported killed yesterday when NATO bombed the small mountain town of Surdulica, 60 km from Nis, near the Bulgarian border.
The Yugoslav news agency Tanjug was informed by civil defence authorities in Vranje that warplanes fired four missiles at the centre of the town, hitting a hospital and damaging 200 houses.
"There are 20 confirmed deaths so far," an official at the Yugoslav defence ministry said. "We are afraid there are many more dead. People were crushed under buildings. There are no factories and no barracks in Surdulica. It's a small, poor place with no industry."
Yesterday there were signs that Russian policy on Kosovo has drawn closer to that of the US despite the Kremlin's continued opposition to NATO air strikes.
In what could be a breakthrough in the effort to restore peace, the Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Vuk Draskovic, has called for a United Nations peacekeeping force in Kosovo under the aegis of a UN Security Council resolution. This is the first time that a Yugoslav official has accepted the idea of an international armed force.
NATO intends to enforce an oil blockade to prevent supplies entering Kosovo through the port of Bar in Montenegro, and will intensify and increase its bombardment of Kosovo, the NATO Supreme Commander for Europe, Gen Wesley Clarke, told a briefing in Brussels yesterday.
A highly placed NATO official did not rule out using force in the blockade - a means opposed by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, in Luxembourg on Monday unless it is supported by a UN mandate.
