c. 1999 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II, deeply concerned over the”indescribable suffering”in Kosovo, is sending a diplomatic mission to Belgrade to deliver his personal appeal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to halt his offensive against ethnic Albanians, the Vatican said Wednesday (March 31).

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, who acts as the pope’s foreign minister, will travel to Belgrade on Thursday with what he described as”a personal message from the Holy Father”to Milosevic.

Tauran also will meet with Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle.

The Vatican announced earlier the pope has dispatched Archbishop Paul Josef Cordes to Albania to coordinate church relief efforts for the tens thousands of Kosovar refugees, most of them Muslims. The German prelate is president of the Pontifical Council”Cor Unum,”which last year distributed $23.2 million in disaster recovery and development aid worldwide.

The Vatican action came as both the United States and religious relief agencies were scrambling to respond to the growing humanitarian crisis created by the refugees.

The U.S. government announced it will provide an additional $50 million to meet the humanitarian crisis. Church World Service, the relief arm of the National Council of Churches, said it is sending $800,000 to its partner agency in Albania to provide blankets and bedding for the refugees and that $100,000 is being channeled through the International Orthodox Christian Charities, the relief arm of Orthodox church bodies in the United States and Canada.

In Geneva, Action by Churches Together issued a $4 million appeal to help fund its work with the refugees. Peter Hovering, a spokesman for DanChurchAid, the Danish partner of ACT, reported a three-mile queue at the Kosovo-Macedonian border as Serb security forces allowed people through only after trying to”squeeze”money or other valuables from them.

At the Vatican, amid reports the Holy See had given strong encouragement to Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov’s failed attempt to mediate with Milosevic on Tuesday, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, met Wednesday with former Russian Prime Minister Igor Gaidar and two other ex-ministers. The unofficial delegation also spoke briefly with the pope following his weekly general audience.

Navarro-Valls said the delegation”came to illustrate some of their proposals for an initiative that could help to restore peace to the Balkans.” Vatican sources said the idea of a mission to Belgrade was the pope’s.

Sodano and Tauran discussed it with key ambassadors to the Holy See, including those from the NATO nations, whom they summoned to a Vatican meeting on short notice Tuesday. NATO and Serb authorities will have to give their approval to ensure the safety of the delegation’s plane.

The Vatican spokesman said Tauran told the envoys the Holy See seeks urgent action to halt military operations, aid the Kosovar refugees and involve the United Nations in a peace process.

Both Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, who discussed the Kosovo crisis with the pope Monday, and Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini said the Vatican is committed to playing an active role in the search for a cease-fire.

Scalfaro said he was convinced a Vatican intervention”is under way with much intensity.””No avenue remains untried,”Dini told the foreign relations and defense committees of the Italian Parliament.”We know that the Vatican, among others, just a few days before the Catholic and Orthodox Easter, is preparing to intervene directly with President Milosevic, who, I repeat, holds in his hands the destiny of the war.” In a letter directing Cordes to travel immediately to Albania, the pope said that Europe was living through”another very sad hour of its history.””The lacerating conflict unfolding in Kosovo is causing the population indescribable suffering and sowing hatred, violence and death,”he said.”The consequences are especially dramatic for the many destroyed families and the innumerable refugees forced to flee, abandoning their homes and everything they have.” John Paul, who lived through the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II, said he was sending Cordes to Albania as a concrete demonstration of”the closeness of the pope to the victims of this tragedy.””To the children, the mothers and the aged that you meet, say that the pope is with them and will be always with them until a just and lasting peace reigns in the lands of the Balkans,”he said.”These populations have seen too much blood and too many tears shed in this 20th century. May the longed-for day of peace finally arise.” The Vatican said Cordes will visit the refugee camp at Kukes and meet with the Albanian president, Rexhep Mejdani, and local church authorities, particularly those in charge of the Catholic charity Caritas.”Catholic aid institutions will collaborate with the government in this phase of emergency assistance and call for a generous response to their appeals on behalf of the refugees,”the Vatican said.

Sodano and Tauran met for two hours Tuesday with ambassadors to the Vatican from states that are members of NATO or permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

Two key envoys were missing, however. Russia did not send its ambassador, and China does not have diplomatic relations with the Vatican.

Navarro-Valls said Sodano called the meeting to inform the diplomats of the pope’s strong concern over the suffering of the Kosovars, to outline the action the Holy See plans”to contribute to a rapid solution of the crisis”and to hear their views.

DEA END POLK