News Digest
Refugee relocation planned I
NATO nations
plan to absorb
thousands
BLACE, Macedonia (AP) - Living
amid squalor and knee-deep mud, tens
of thousands of refugees in a miserable
no-man’s land along the Macedonian
border struggled Sunday against
hunger and freezing temperatures.
Their desperate plight - and that of
tens of thousands of other refugees
flooding out of Kosovo - is spurring
NATO nations to offer temporary
refuge to take the pressure off neigh
bors of the southern Serbian province
that are overwhelmed by the refugee
influx.
Some of the worst of the suffering
could be seen at a squalid encampment
on the Macedonian-Yugoslav border.
In only days, it has become a refugee
city, with wisps of smoke wafting over
a landscape of shelters made of plastic
or blankets.
With no latrines in the camp,
human feces were ground into the mud
underfoot. Some refugees walked into
a half-empty field near a river, many
washing themselves in the freezing
cold water.
“It is like nothing I have ever expe
rienced,” said one woman who identi
fied herself only as Lora, with tears in
her eyes.
After days of waiting, some aid
was arriving at the squalid camp. Aid
workers distributed boxes of cookies
and cartons of juice. Blankets and plas
tic sheeting were also supplied.
For some, the help was coming too
late. Julia Taft, U.S. assistant secretary
of state for refugees who visited the
camp Sunday, said 11 elderly people
had died there in the past few days.
“It is very grim,” she said.
In response to the burgeoning cri
sis, NATO nations prepared to begin
taking in the refugees, while stressing
it was only a temporary measure.
Germany is ready to accept 40,000; the
United States, 20,000; and Turkey,
20,000, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea
said in Brussels, Belgium on Sunday.
NATO is marshaling planes, food,
shelter, medical and other aid for
Macedonia and Albania, which are
dealing with an estimated 135,000
refugees and 190,000 refugees respec
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ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 1999
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
Darko Bandig/Newsmakers
AN ETHINC ALBANIAN BOY shows a peace sign as he travels on a bus after being expelled from Kosovo on
Saturday. As NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia continue, tens of thousands of Kosovars are being forced to
flee to neighboring countries and NATO-members nations.
tively. Montenegro, the smaller of the
two republics that make up Yugoslavia,
has taken in another 32,000 Kosovars
who say they are fleeing Serb atroci
ties.
Taft said she had received assur
ances from President Kiro Gligorov
that Macedonia’s border would remain
open to those fleeing Kosovo, provided
other nations would take them in.
Fearing political instability as a
result of the influx, Macedonia said it
could allow no more than 20,000
refugees to remain. But it agreed
Sunday to allow arrivals to be ferried
from the muddy border field to a tent
city being set up by NATO forces near
its capital, Skopje.
At the edge of the encampment,
long lines of buses were taking away an
estimated 300 refugees an hour, or
about 5,000 a day, slowly shrinking the
encampment whose size had swelled
to 70,000 refugees.
A few were already being flown
out of Macedonia on the return legs of
arriving aid flights, and Macedonia’s
deputy prime minister, Radmilla
Kipijanova, said Sunday that larger
scale airlifts using military transport
would get under way from the Skopje
airport
The airlift was to have begun
Sunday night, but by nightfall no
flights-had left, and officials said they
were hoping to start Monday.
Deputy Secretary of State Strobe
Talbott, who met Sunday with
Macedonian officials, accused
Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic of deliberately seeking to
destabilize neighboring states by
flooding them with Kosovar refugees.
“The essence of what has hap
pened is that in addition to the outrage
that President Milosevic is perpetrat
ing against the people of Kosovo, he is
also using refugees as an instrument of
war, as a weapon against die stability of
neighboring states,” Talbott said. “He
I
will not succeed.”
NATO is trying to reassure the
front-line states that they will not be
left to shoulder the burden alone. On
Monday, a NATO delegation led by the
alliance’s Deputy Secretary-General
Sergio Balanzino, leaves for Romania
and Bulgaria, then will travel on to
Macedonia and Albania on Tuesday to
consult about refugee problems.
Some questioned whether NATO
might be exacerbating the problem by
providing temporary shelter outside
the region.
“We should not disperse people all
over,” European Union Humanitarian
Aid Commissioner Emma Bonino said
Sunday. “We should not cooperate in
any way with ethnic cleansing.”
NATO stressed it remained the
alliance’s aim for refugees to return to
Kosovo - but acknowledged that
would not be easy and until peace and
security were established in the
province.
Law faculty tables motion
on long-hair controversy
By JoshKnaub
Staff writer
The faculty of the University
Nebraska College of Law tabled z
motion Friday relating to long-hairec
third-year student Thayne Glenn.
Glenn was denied access ir
January to a program sponsored by the
law college and County Attorney Gar)
Lacey’s office because of die length ol
his hair.
The motion, which did not men
tion Glenn, would affirm that the
College of Law complied with the uni
versity’s non-discrimination policy
which includes hair length and require
the college to not participate in an)
program that did not comply with the
policy.
Law Professor John Snowden, the
motion’s chief sponsor, has previously
questioned whether students could be
discriminated against based on their
appearance.
Kevin Ruser, the faculty coordina
tor of the criminal clinic from which
Glenn was barred, was not able to
attend Friday’s meeting and requested
a delay until he could be present
The motion to table passed 18-4
after an amendment to delay action
until the next regularly scheduled
meeting, slated for August, failed 11
10.
Nancy Rapoport, dean of the col
lege, said the faculty would meet again
“within a couple of weeks” to discuss
the issue.
■ United Kingdom
Ticket sales lagging for
Princess Diana tours
LONDON (AP) - Sales of tickets
to visit Princess Diana’s ancestral home
and her final resting place have been
slow so far this year, and nearly half
remain unsold three months before the
gates are opened to the public.
Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, will
open the Althorp estate, and the muse
um he created in her memory, from July
1 through Aug. 30, the day before the
second anniversary of Diana’s death in
a 1997 Paris car crash.
The tickets went on sale in January
and more than 70,000 of the 152,000
available tickets remain unsold, a
spokeswoman for the earl said Sunday.
■Texas
JFK Memorial vandalized
DALLAS (AP) - The John F.
Kennedy Memorial was defaced by
vandals with spray paint who caused
thousands of dollars worth of damage.
The black and red graffiti on the
interior walls of the downtown memor
ial might have been done by a hate
group, said Officer Leroy Quigg of the
Dallas police gang unit. The painted
images included a swastika.
Police believe the vandalism
occurred late Friday night or Saturday
morning.
Cleanup should be completed in a
few days, officials said.
The monument attracts about
500,000 visitors annually. It was also
vandalized in 1997.
The memorial, built in 1970, con
sists of 50-foot-high white concrete
walls that surround a square black mar
ble slab bearing die name of the presi
dent who was assassinated nearby in
1963.
■ Israel
Christians, Muslims fight
over proposed plaza
NAZARETH, Israel (AP) - Easter
Sunday turned violent in the town of
Jesus’ boyhood when clashes erupted
between Christians and Muslims,
angry over the planned construction of
a plaza for millennium Christian pil
grims near a mosque.
Thousands of young Muslim men
gathered at the disputed site near the
Church of the Annunciation where
Muslims have been holding protests for
nearly a year.
More than 70 Israeli police in riot
gear soon arrived but made little effort
to stop the violence.
■ Russia
Cargo ship successfully
docks with Mir space station
MOSCOW (AP) - A cargo ship
docked smoothly with Russia’s Mir
space station Sunday, bringing with it
5,364 pounds of food, water, fuel and
equipment for scientific experiments,
Russian news agencies reported.
The Progress cargo ship had blasted
off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in
Kazakstan on Friday.
The Mir’s current crew of two
Russians and a Frenchman is possibly
its last. If outside investors cannot be
found to foot the 13-year-old station’s
$250 million yearly costs, the cash
strapped government will discard it in
August
Russia’s space chief has said private
investors have come forward, but the
United States still wants the govern
ment to dedicate its attention to the
International Space Station.