Return-Path: Received: from zimt01.dillingen.baynet.de ([194.95.207.3]) by mailin04.btx.dtag.de with smtp id <11dgIQ-001PaVC>; Tue, 19 Oct 1999 22:55:50 +0200 Received: from bndlg.de (buerger31.dillingen.baynet.de [194.95.207.191]) by zimt01.dillingen.baynet.de (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id WAA19466; Tue, 19 Oct 1999 22:36:48 +0200 Message-ID: <380CD492.EEBED352@bndlg.de> Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 22:29:06 +0200 From: Wolfgang Plarre X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [de] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: de MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Hans Raidel , Deutscher Bundestag , SPD Verteidigungsminister Scharping , "SPD =?iso-8859-1?Q?Bundesgesch=E4ftsf=FChrer?= Ottmar Schreinr" , " =?iso-8859-1?Q?CDU=2DBundesgesch=E4ftsstelle?=" , Dr Edmund Stoiber , Bundesinnenministerium , "Bayerisches Staatsministerium =?iso-8859-1?Q?f=FCr?= Arbeit und Sozialordnung" , President Clinton , USA Department Secretary , "Swedish Premier, Mr. Peterson" , Swedish Foreign Department , " =?iso-8859-1?Q?Europ=E4ische?= Union" , "Steinbaum, Jason" , Tony Blair Prime Minister Britain , Jacques Chirac President France , Vice President , First Lady , "Romania, President Emile Constantinescu" , Slovenska Republika , NATO , Ernst Guelcher , Prime Minister Tony Blair , UN Secretary General Kofi Annan , SPD Parteivorstand , SPD Rau , SPD Scharping , SPD Thierse , SPD Wieczorek-Zeul , "Marieluise.Beck" , "Joschka.Fischer" , fraktion CC: Evangelischer Pressedienst , GEP , Pressestelle der EKD , Antenne Bayern Redaktion , Springer Deutschland , SPD , Saarbrueucker Zeitung , Spotlight Verlag <102404.367@compuserve.com>, Washington Times 2 , Wall Street Journal , Sunday commentary section , South Carolina ETV , Newsbytes News Service , New York Times , Clari Net , Clari II Net , Christian Science Monitor , Chicago Sun Times , Boston Herald , Associated Press , Sydney Morning Herald , Rolling Stone , Sky News , Short Stories , BBC Worldwide , Sunday Morning Live , Sunday Morning , "Stock Quotations (Questions/Suggest.)" , Sports , Sound Advice , Saterday afternoon at the Opera , Royal Canadian Air Farce , Rough Cuts , Roots and Wings , Jan Helin , Sundsvalls Arbetarekommun , society for news design , Spanija TV RTVE2 , Spanija TV RTVE 1 , Spanija TV CSatelite , Spanija TV Antena3 , Ramiro de Villapadierna , Small World Television , "SOWI-News (Uni Innsbruck)" , "Seifert Thomas (Falter)" , "Seidl Conrad (Der Standard, Bierpapst)" , "Schwendtner Joachim (CR SPORT-aktiv)" , Schwarzataler Bezirksbote , "Schrenk Christian J. (ORF-OOe)" , "Spudich Helmut (Salzburger Nachrichten)" <73320.3305@compuserve.com>, Svajcarska TV SFDRS , Svajcarska TV RTSI , "Sonntagszeitung (Zuerich)" , "Agence France Presse's" Subject: Humanitarian Problems in Kosov@ - some news Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by zimt01.dillingen.baynet.de id WAA19466 Some news concerning humanitarian problems in Kosov@ are following # New UNDP Kosovo report urges priority for investments in people over roads # Kosovo Humanitarian Update No. 14 4.3 DETAINEES=20 (there are more very interesting news in the full report) # Balkan Winter Threatens Kosovo's Homeless As it seems there is too little support and not sufficient money to solve even the "little" problems (like communication)! People in Kosov@ are in urgent need of support to do by themselves, what they can and will do. But bringing material and tools to them is often prevented by lacking possibilities for secure and low-priced transport to Kosov@ ! Many obstacles are put in the way. For Humanitarian Reconstruction Aid and return of refugees should be given travel papers by governments means of transportation by small prices free transit - without taxes, duties Relatives and friends in Europe and all over the world should facilitated donor and help to Kosov@ and not complicated - by unnecessary bureaucracy ! (Example given: Why an epidemic-certificate must be paid for fresh washed clothing or cleaned mattresses healthy people used before ?) Wolfgang Plarre ______________________________________________________________________ http://www.undp.org/dpa/frontpagearchive/october99/14oct99/index.html Thursday, 14 October, 1999 New UNDP Kosovo report urges priority for investments in people over roads For post-conflict reconstruction and development to be effective in Kosovo, organizations working in the Balkan province must adopt a new model of development assistance, according to a report recently commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme. The publication, "Human Security in South East Europe," argues against the replication of the Marshall Plan - the post-World War II reconstruction strategy for Europe that focused on rebuilding the physical infrastructure. "A better way to reduce conflict would be to invest less in roads and more in people and institutions," argue authors of the report who are analysts from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, FYR Macedonia and Romania. The report will be officially launched tomorrow (Friday, 15 October) in The Hague. It will be presented during a UNDP workshop "Beyond Transition: Ten Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall." The authors of the report write that unless new strategies are developed, reconstruction of South East Europe is doomed to failure. The report argues that development assistance should concentrate on promoting regional cooperation and strengthening the states' capacity to provide social, economic and political security to their citizens. The human security approach, they write, is the only one that can combine post-conflict recovery with the prevention of future wars. "In the end, the major criteria for the success of reconstruction should be improvements in access to education, better quality of health care, less unemployment and guaranteed political, civil and cultural rights," says the report. Earlier this year, UNDP started work on a US$5 million programme to create jobs in war-torn villages in Kosovo that exemplify the principles outlined in the "Human Security in South East Europe" report. The programme began in =C7abra, a village where no houses were left standing after the war, and where officials said job creation is viewed as an essential component of Kosovo's rehabilitation and reconstruction. More than 300,000 people fled the region during the Kosovo conflict, and they need jobs or other income-earning opportunities to ease their transition home. The employment programme being launched by UNDP and the European Commission, will help create 10,000 labor-intensive jobs for unemployed youth, demobilized soldiers and others affected by the war. Job opportunities will be created in projects to improve the environment, rehabilitate public infrastructure and restore basic services - such as water, sanitation and electricity. The programme will also provide vocational training to workers, and will purchase construction materials, tools and equipment from local vendors to give a boost to the local economy. ______________________________________________________________________ http://wwwnotes.reliefweb.int/files/rwdomino.nsf/480fa8736b88bbc3c12564f6= 004c8ad5/c6735dfbe59855b4c125680e002bf9db?OpenDocument R e l i e f W e b=20 http://www.reliefweb.int Source: UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Date: 15 Oct 1999 Kosovo Humanitarian Update No. 14 (...) 4.3 DETAINEES=20 4.3.1 OHCHR continues to gather information on detainees: The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has gathered information through interviews with family members on more that 150 cases of persons held in detention in Serbian prisons. Field staff are conducting interviews in all regions in Kosovo. With the information obtained, OHCHR seeks to clarify the status and whereabouts of detainees, particularly those identified as being vulnerable (such as minors, the elderly, sick, and women). Based on information gathered during field interviews, OHCHR staff visited 7 detainees in Nis prison on 4 October.=20 Persons with relatives in detention can contact the OHCHR office in Pristina. Tel: 038 5490 52/53, 063 244 133; address: Robert Gajdiku 63=20 4.3.2 OHCHR convenes second meeting of the Commission on Prisoners and Detainees: The Commission on Prisoners and Detainees held its second session in Pristina on 5 October. Commission members welcomed the release on 4 October of 54 detainees from the prison in Sremska Mitrovica. The former detainees were assisted by the ICRC and transferred by bus to Kosovo. The ICRC also help them make contact with their relatives. Further releases are expected in the immediate future.=20 The Commission agreed that it will request all concerned governments, authorities, and parties to advise the Commission what actions they have undertaken to establish the whereabouts and status of detainees for whom there is no record. The commission will also request information concerning actions taken to prevent the practice of arbitrary detention. The next meeting of the Commission will take place on 19 October.=20 [ the full report you can find too at http://www.bndlg.de/~wplarre/back451.htm ] _________________________________________________________________________ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/balkans/balkans.htm Balkan Winter Threatens Kosovo's Homeless By Peter Finn and R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, October 19, 1999; Page A12=20 OBRINJE, Yugoslavia-Sitting on a stool on a windswept hill, wrapped in three sweaters and a man's jacket and dragging deeply on a cigarette as if for warmth, Faza Hysenaj, 98, is tired of foreign visitors. "Are you here to talk, or are you going to do something?" she barks at a reporter, waving away the looks of consternation of younger family members. Behind Hysenaj are three tents, two for the nine members of the Hysenaj family to sleep in, and one for living and cooking. Beside the tents is Hysenaj's ruined home, which was first burned in September 1998, when Serbian police forces swept through this former stronghold of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Tahir Hysenaj, Faza's 45-year-old son, managed to rebuild one room to shelter the family through last winter, but the house was burned again this spring when Belgrade government forces launched a brutal military operation to purge Kosovo of its ethnic Albanian majority. Today, the dwelling is roofless, and only one room has four standing walls. "It's very, very cold at night," Faza Hysenaj said. "I'm very worried about the winter." Kosovo's unforgiving winter is fast approaching, and Western agencies, led by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, are in a race to patch together a shelter system that will protect families from ice, snow and freezing temperatures. It is not everything the people of Kosovo had hoped for, and the coming months will be difficult for hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians whom Yugoslav army and Serbian police forces drove from their homes this spring in a 2 1/2-month campaign of shelling, burning and killing. "There will be enough shelter," declared Dennis McNamara, head of the U.N. refugee agency's office in Kosovo, who said U.N. workers will be distributing shelter kits to winterize sections of gutted homes through the end of November. "It won't be very pleasant, and it won't be very comfortable, but there will be enough shelter." Others are not so sanguine, saying they fear that a lack of food and shelter could provoke social disorder in Kosovo this winter, particularly if rural residents move into the province's already overcrowded cities, where electricity and water systems are already breaking down. Since NATO peacekeeping troops entered Kosovo on June 12, the prewar population of its capital, Pristina, has doubled to 200,000, and the city is often without power. "We are facing a real risk that winter will bring huge problems, driving more and more people into the cities, especially Pristina," said Paloke Berishaj, a senior official with a local charity, the Mother Teresa Society. "Everything is running very late, and we believe that 500,000 people still don't know where they will spend the winter." Among them are the Hysenaj family, which has still not received a shelter kit from agencies contracted by the U.N. refugee agency to provide them. As the nights grow colder, the family is growing frantic. "Look where we're sleeping," said Tahir Hysenaj, pointing to a porous tent. "The cold is getting in, and we're shivering. I thought we might have our house rebuilt." Like many Kosovo Albanians, Hysenaj had huge--and unrealistic--expectations of their Western benefactors. Many believed their homes would be immediately rebuilt this fall, but the massive reconstruction of the 100,000 homes destroyed or heavily damaged in the Serb-led Yugoslav offensive will not begin until spring. Instead, the West, through the U.N. refugee agency, is supplying stoves and the winterizing kits, roofing some houses and creating a system of large, collective shelters across the province. But the backbone of the West's winter-survival plan--drawing on the experience of Kosovo Albanians through 16 months of conflict that reached a crescendo last spring--will be the willingness of those who have shelter space to take in the hundreds of thousands of people who don't. Some U.N. officials believe that catastrophic winter scenarios painted by some ethnic Albanians are more a reflection of their disappointment that there was not an immediate reconstruction effort, rather than a real fear that some people will freeze. "Expectations were very high," said McNamara, who noted that there was neither enough time nor money from donor countries to begin rebuilding this year. Even obtaining plastic sheeting for the winterizing kits has been a slow, logistically demanding task. Some families, believing their homes would be rebuilt swiftly, cut up the sheeting to cover floors, forcing the U.N. agency to provide them with more. Although aid agencies plan to continue distributing shelter materials for several more weeks, some fear they will still come up short and that tens of thousands of people who have been living outdoors or in partially repaired houses will be forced to find warmer shelter in cities.=20 In Pristina, U.N. officials are worried that an aged heating plant that supplies steam heat to 40 percent of the city may not operate reliably through the winter. "Everything will be fine, as long as winter does not arrive," joked Thomas Koenygs, head of the U.N. civil administration effort here. If the heating plant fails, he said, and "everyone puts on an electric heater, then the transformers [at Kosovo's main power plant] will fail," and the entire province will be plunged into darkness. The power plant is already operating precariously, which became all too evident when electrical service failed repeatedly over the last two weeks. The plant has two transformers that W. Hillary Lee, the U.N. official overseeing electricity, water and heating matters here, says the Belgrade government operated for more than a decade without making needed repairs. One of the turbines could explode at any time, some officials have warned. Moreover, when Serbian plant managers withdrew, they took with them all the operation manuals and disabled the facility's computerized system, he said. British engineers have been able to get the turbines to function intermittently, providing roughly a third of the electricity Kosovo needs this winter, but they are not sure how long they can maintain operation. U.N. officials say additional electricity will be supplied through transmission lines recently reconnected to neighboring Macedonia and Albania, but funds have not been donated yet to pay for the power purchase, and the lines themselves are in poor condition. "I am not optimistic," Lee said. "The situation is significantly better than it was in August, but electricity is a big worry." =20 =A9 1999 The Washington Post Company ******************************************************************** Wiederaufbau Kosov@ - Reconstruction Kosov@ - Rind=EBrtimi i Kosov@s http://www.osnabrueck.netsurf.de:8080/~dbein/wiederaufbau.htm ******************************************************************** +---------------------------------------------------+ | Wolfgang Plarre | | Dillinger Str. 41, D-86637 Wertingen, Germany | | E-mail: wplarre@bndlg.de w.plarre@kosova.nu | | Tel: +49-8272-98974 Fax: +49-8272-98975 | | Internet: http://www.bndlg.de/~wplarre | +---------------------------------------------------+ _________________________________________________________ Ein Zeichen setzen: @ ! KosovO + KosovA =3D Kosov@ ! _________________________________________________________