International donor conference helps formerly deported peoples (07/05/98)

International donor conference helps formerly deported peoples

Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the U.N.

UNITED NATIONS - The second international donor conference to help formerly deported peoples now returning to Crimea, at its one day meeting in Ukraine's capital on June 26, managed to collect $5 million (U.S.) in hard-currency contributions from more than half of the participating countries, while the remaining participants made pledges.

Representatives of 26 countries attended the conference. The meeting was originally scheduled to take place on May 26 in The Hague, the Netherlands, but was postponed at the request of Ukraine's government to give more time for the potential donors to make decisions regarding their participation and possible contributions.

The conference was chaired by Max van der Stoel, the high commissioner for national minorities of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who said that Ukraine alone is unable to carry the burden of resettlement of the formerly deported peoples and for that reason the international community should offer coordinated assistance.

There is a need, he noted, to elaborate a general consolidated program of assistance to the Crimean Tatars and other formerly deported peoples. He also expressed the hope that this conference would mark the beginning of a long-term process.

Valeriy Smolii, vice prime minister of Ukraine, expressed his satisfaction with the results of the conference, saying it demonstrated the psychological, moral and material readiness of the world to respond to Ukraine's problem in accommodating those formerly deported. He expressed his confidence that, via joint efforts of the international community, it would be possible to substantially ease and speed up the return of thousands of peoples to their historical homeland.

Mr. Smolii told the participants of the Kyiv conference that an aid package for $13 million (U.S.) is needed to solve the problems of the formerly deported peoples who returned to Crimea.

In recent years, some 200,000 Crimean Tatars and some 12,000 other formerly deported peoples or their descendants have returned to their original home in Ukraine.

Since 1992 the government of Ukraine has allocated some $300 million (U.S.) from the state budget to support the formerly deported peoples in their resettlement. International aid for 1996-1997 constituted 3.8 million hrv (about $1.9 million U.S.).

The money collected at the conference and the pledged contributions will go toward the creation of an infrastructure, new jobs, the construction of houses, and for the social and cultural needs of the formerly deported peoples.