Winter Hazards Forecast for Refugees

Up to half a million people who have fled Yugoslavia’s bloody breakup may be stranded this winter without food and shelter, a U.N. official warned Wednesday at an international meeting on the refugee crisis in the Balkans.

But European countries wrangled over who should care for the hundreds of thousands who threaten to flood their shores.

Sadako Ogata, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, called Wednesday’s emergency meeting of representatives of 50 nations to plead for money to help the refugees and to encourage Western European nations to temporarily open their borders.

Meanwhile, 21 U.N. trucks loaded with food and medicine rumbled into Sarajevo on Wednesday--the largest aid convoy to reach the besieged capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina by road.