Aid worker Geoff Robinson has vowed to return to war-torn Kosovo - despite being shocked at what he saw there.
He and fellow volunteers have just arrived back in Britain after successfully completing their mission to deliver 220 boxes of badly-needed aid to a remote mining town in the former Yugoslavia.
Mr Robinson spoke today of his shock at finding conditions in Kosovo similar to how he imagined Nazi Germany.
"In Pristina, which is the capital of Kosovo, there was a prevailing sense of fear," said Mr Robinson, of Barkerend Road, Bradford.
"About one in every ten cars gets stopped and searched. I must have been stopped at least five or six times while I was there. It's like an occupation. You get loads of people selling cigarettes on the streets but as soon as the paramilitaries come around the corner everyone scatters. There's just a sense of fear and after dark it gets even scarier."
Mr Robinson was a member of a convoy which reached the front-line town of Mitrovica with urgent supplies - against all the odds.
"I always thought we would get through but all the way down through Serbia nobody expected us to make it," said the former Bradford Council employee.
The convoy - which included Mr Robinson's own Ford Escort, now scratched and slightly the worse for wear after its trek - had taken some aid from Britain to Tuzla before loading up with nearly two tonnes of supplies which had been collected by Bosnian miners. The aid, which mostly consisted of dried food such as pasta, rice and flour, was one of the first consignments of aid to arrive in the isolated town of Mitrovica for many months.
Now Mr Robinson is planning a second mission to Kosovo - and he hopes, with more backing of the authorities, that even more aid can be delivered.
"The fact that our team of unpaid volunteers could get through shows that it is possible for ordinary people in Britain and elsewhere to do something," he said.
Countdown to Kosovo
August 1 - Travel to Oxford to collect other members of the convoy
5 to 7 - Arrive in Tuzla and load up with Bosnia miners' aid
8 and 9 - Support vehicles cross Serbia and arrive in Pristina to sort out paperwork. Lorry of aid stuck in Tuzla for four days
11 - Mr Robinson and other volunteers suffer suspected heat stroke.
12 - Lorry held up again, this time of the Serbian border by paperwork
13 - Convoy members have to take three sample boxes of supplies over the border to Macedonia to be checked by public health officials
14 - Convoy successfully delivers 220 boxes of aid to Mitrovica
17 - Final meetings and paperwork completed
18 - Depart Pristina for journey back to Bradford.
Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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