Slimming Food And Marble Wax For Refugees In Tents

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday September 4, 1999

By DESMOND O'GRADY in Rome

Italy's pride in its emergency aid effort to Kosovo has been dented by revelations that more than half of it is still stored in containers, and that smuggling between Italy and Montenegro is rife.

Five million Italians responded generously to appeals to help Kosovo.

They queued outside centres established to gather clothes, food, medicines and other goods, as well as giving more than $A150 million for reconstruction projects. Thousands of volunteers left for Albania to help refugees.

But only now have newspapers revealed that material from only 1,050 of the 2,300 aid containers has been delivered. About 950 containers were still at the southern Italian ports of Bari and Sicily, and 300 in Albania. In addition, a mountain of material, mainly pharmaceutical, is stacked under cover on Bari wharves.

The Prime Minister, Mr Massimo D'Alema, has deplored right-wing newspaper attacks on his Government's handling of the aid emergency.

Mr D'Alema explained that, by the time the contents of 1,050 containers were distributed, the refugees had returned to Kosovo. Italian aid had overshot the mark.

He added that the material in the 300 containers in Albania had been given to that Government, with some fire engines and ambulances. Some of that still in containers in Italy will be sent to Turkish earthquake victims.

Newspapers have unearthed damaging examples of unprofessional behaviour by members of the Civil Emergency Unit: some containers were packed mixing medicines, food and clothing.

By the time they reached their destination, the foodstuffs and the medicines had gone bad, sometimes affecting the more durable goods: there are stories of sausages swollen and purple after travelling in trucks without refrigeration.

Inappropriate goods were dispatched: slimming preparations for hungry refugees and marble wax for people living in tents.

In Bari the containers are being dismantled to get rid of unsuitable or expired goods. There are plans to send some of the containers to the port of Bar in Montenegro to help victims of the conflict in Yugoslavia itself.

If so, they will cross the traffic moving swiftly from Bar to the Italian coastline: powerful motorboats smuggling mainly cigarettes but sometimes drugs, arms and illegal migrants to Italy.

Montenegro has become a bolt-hole for some of the Italian underworld.

From Montenegro, 2,000-horsepower boats capable of winning offshore races are evading less powerful coast guard craft and landing goods on the Italian coast.

Trucks speed them north or to Naples, escorted by reinforced cars which have bullet-proof windows and are fitted with spikes to ram police vehicles.

So far this year 15 police have been injured in the clashes with the smugglers, 342 smugglers arrested and 323,000 kilograms of cigarettes seized.

© 1999 Sydney Morning Herald

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