Ethnic Albanians swarm back into Kosovo

KLA rebels were helping border officials weed out Albanian looters.

The Associated Press

MORINI BORDER CROSSING, Albania -- NATO forces, Albanian policemen and Kosovo rebels struggled to control the thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees lining up Thursday in battered trucks and tractors to go home, while international aid agencies urged the refugees to wait a few more days. German troops were letting Kosovo Liberation Army rebels take their weapons with them, and rebel officials were helping them determine whether Albanian looters were mixed in with the crossing refugees. NATO forces appeared unprepared to deal with the flood of desperate people. At one point, a Danish policewoman shouted in English at cars and tractors crossing into the left-hand lane: "Stay on this side of the road!"The refugees, apparently not understanding her, chanted back: "NATO! NATO!"Sali Bytyci, a farmer from the Suva Reka area, said KLA fighters told him his house hadn't been burned by the Serbs. He rounded up his wife and six children, bought 220 pounds of wheat and five cartons of cigarettes, and headed for the border. About 15 German army trucks and military vehicles waited behind his tractor to cross the border Thursday as his children waved at the soldiers. Accelerating the returns were reports in the camps of Albanian looters crossing the border to prey on the abandoned homes of refugees. KLA rebels -- unarmed and in civilian clothes -- were helping the German soldiers who are running the border station recognize Albanians mixed among the refugees and turning them back. The Germans said they were happy to have the rebels there. "They can recognize who's from Kosovo and who's from Albania. We can't," said 1st Lt. Patrick Weigang. The Germans were letting refugees bring weapons back into Kosovo - - if they could either show a KLA membership card or if the KLA rebels at the border recognized them. "Since there is no agreement yet, we let them go through with their guns," Weigang said. Local Albanians, seeing the refugees' desperation, jumped in to make some money. Some offered taxi service -- a ride to Prizren, 12 miles from the border, cost $5.30 a person -- while others rented trucks for $160. In the camps in the nearby town of Kukes, UNICEF launched a mine awareness campaign, distributing leaflets and posters warning of the danger of mines and other explosives. But with up to 17,000 refugees returning to Kosovo every day -- no one knows exactly since officials have given up on counting -- Kukes, which now shelters about 80,000 refugees, could be empty in a week. "It's difficult to educate the kids about the danger of the mines. They like to run around and play everywhere," said Alfonso Artico, a UNICEF spokesman. "We went to a school tent this morning with a de-mining specialist to talk to the kids, but the teacher had packed up the school tent and gone back to Kosovo."

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