Dole Tours Tent Camps, Calls for End to ‘Genocide’

Moved by tales of ethnic Albanians driven from their homes, Elizabeth Hanford Dole on Friday said of the conflict in Kosovo, “This is genocide,” and declared it “is a war we must win.”

“My history, my experience, certainly brings me here, because I’m deeply, deeply moved by the plight of the Kosovo Albanians,” said Dole, the former president of the American Red Cross and a potential Republican Party presidential candidate.

Visiting with one family in a tent at a refugee camp here, where 20,000 refugees are being housed, Dole called Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic “an evil man.”

“The only thing that can be considered a success is driving Milosevic’s forces out. . . . Whatever it takes,” she said.

Dole is in Macedonia at the invitation of the Mercy Corps aid organization. She also was to meet with Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia Christopher Hill and several nongovernmental organizations.

She is to leave today for Albania, where she will visit other refugee camps.

“I want people to feel the outrage I feel,” Dole said. “That this could be done to people--to be driven out of their homes and to have their homes burned, their cattle killed.”