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THE WHITE HOUSE

                     Office of the Press Secretary
                            (Yulee, Florida)
________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                       May 28, 1999

STATEMENT BY THE PRESS SECRETARY

                   Elie Wiesel To Visit Refugee Camps
                        in Macedonia and Albania

The President announced today that Mr. Elie Wiesel will travel to Macedonia and Albania next week at the President's request to meet with Kosovar refugees and to hear firsthand their accounts of ethnic cleansing and other atrocities. Mr. Wiesel also plans to meet with representatives of international human rights and relief organizations to discuss the humanitarian situation in Kosovo and the impact of refugees on neighboring states.

Mr. Wiesel is one of the world's foremost moral philosophers. A Holocaust survivor, he has written and spoken widely on genocide and on related questions of moral responsibility in international affairs. In 1985, Mr. Wiesel was awarded the Congressional Medal of Freedom, and, in 1986, the Nobel Peace Prize. He is the Andrew Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University.

Mr. Wiesel will be in Macedonia and Albania from Monday, May 31 to Thursday, June 3. Upon his return to the United States, he will present his findings to the President.

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