VIC: CARE meetings offer hope over aid pair: agency executive

AAP General News (Australia)
04-05-1999
VIC: CARE meetings offer hope over aid pair: agency executive

MELBOURNE, April 5 AAP - Meetings with officials on the Croatia-Yugoslav border had given
CARE Australia hope that two of its workers, missing for five days, were being detained
nearby, the aid agency said today.

CARE chief executive officer Charles Tapp and Australian ambassador to Yugoslavia, Chris
Lamb, arrived in Zagreb last night and "went very quickly to the border area", the agency's
emergency coordinator Brian Doolan told reporters in Melbourne.

The two aid workers Steve Pratt and Peter Wallace are believed to have been taken into
custody while trying to cross into Croatia on March 31.

"They've (Mr Tapp and Ambassador Lamb) had meetings with border officials.

"That initial meeting has given them some heart.

"They do believe that Steve and Peter are still being held somewhere in the border region."

Mr Doolan declined to expand on the information Mr Tapp and Mr Lamb had received, saying
negotiations to find the two workers were at a sensitive stage.

Mr Doolan was speaking at Melbourne's Tullamarine airport, where two more CARE emergency
aid workers were flying out, headed for refugee operations in Macedonia.

AAP imc/bg/er/cfm

KEYWORD: KOSOVO CARE DOOLAN

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