Kosovo sparks call for action on refugees

Date: 01/10/1998

By Simon Taylor

EU FOREIGN ministers will call for more concerted action to tackle the growing refugee problem on the EU's southern borders when they meet in Luxembourg next week.

Italy, Germany and Austria are becoming increasingly worried that growing numbers of refugees displaced by fighting in Kosovo may try to enter their countries.

Ministers are expected to agree to send a special team of migration experts to the Kosovar capital of Pristina to monitor the situation. There will also be calls for more money to be made available to deal with the situation on the ground in Kosovo, both from the EU's humanitarian aid programme ECHO and from individual member states.

Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini will take the lead in arguing for more coordinated action, warning that his country faces the largest influx of migrants if local policies fail.

Aid organisations estimate that the houses of up to 70,000 people have been destroyed by military action in Kosovo, and a total of 300,000 have been driven from their homes.

Ministers are expected to agree that the EU needs a long-term policy to cope with the growing number of refugee crises, instead of having to agree ad hoc solutions to each new problem as it occurs.

Following discussions at a meeting of justice and home affairs ministers last week, officials believe that the action plan drawn up last year to deal with migrants from Iraq and Kurdistan could serve as a useful model for a common refugee policy.

Officials from the member states most directly affected by flows of refugees claimed that the plan had been successful in reducing or stabilising the influx.

The plan concentrated on cooperation with the Turkish authorities and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to provide safe areas within the affected region where displaced people could stay. It also focused on the need to counter organised crime to prevent refugees being smuggled across borders.

Groups working on behalf of refugees have cautiously welcomed the move towards agreeing a common EU approach to the problem, but stress that the Union must consider the issue from a humanitarian perspective. A spokeswoman at the European Council for Refugees and Exiles said she hoped that the Council of Ministers would recognise that most refugees needed some form of protection.

Human rights groups have warned that the EU's efforts to tackle the problem could fail if it does not rethink its policy on the ground towards Kosovan refugees.

Lotte Leicht, of the Brussels office of Human Rights Watch, said she doubted that the EU was facing a 'wave' of refugees, as some member states were suggesting. In any case, she added, the main priority for the Union must be to ensure that the civilian population was helped.

Leicht expressed concern that emergency centres responsible for distributing food and medical aid were being guarded by soldiers from the Yugoslavian National Army.

She said they had proved to be "an untrustworthy protection force" and insisted that these centres needed "sincere international protection".