Unattended they rise rapidly consuming the dry grass or trees until they are blazing out

Unattended, they rise, rapidly consuming the dry grass or trees, until they are blazing out of control.
Eventually, enough people are mobilised to beat down the flames, using the only tools they have had for centuries – clothes tied to sticks, brooms and water from rivers or wells. Every year people are injured as they fight or flee these fires.Urban Mongolians shrug off the blazes They happen every year The people in the countryside are careless. But this scarcely populated country (2.3 million at the last count) has been stunned by the ferocity of this year’s fires.Nearly 300 have been recorded this year and about 25 are still burning. A quarter of Mongolia’s forests have been burnt to the ground. At least 19 people have lost their lives, including a 16-year-old firefighter.

Generations of livestock have been wiped out, or burnt so badly they have had to be destroyed. Hundreds of families are homeless, their traditional round- tent dwellings quickly consumed in the fires.Some families have resorted to sleeping in the open, where, even in May temperatures can drop to -10 degrees at night.It is the sheer size of Mongolia that has allowed these fires to rage It is the size of Western Europe. It reflects growing European concern about the authoritarian ways of Croatia’s President, Franjo Tudjman.The council is best known for its 1950 European Human Rights Convention, which enables citizens of member-nations to challenge their governments for suspected civil- rights abuses in a special court.Its parliamentary assembly voted on 24 April to admit Croatia, despite misgivings about Mr Tudjman’s government. Normally Croatia’s entry would be rubber-stamped by the organisation’s foreign ministers.But the European nations felt obliged to take the unprecedented action of delaying membership after Mr Tudjman vetoed the election of an opposition mayor of Zagreb and cracked down on the independent media. Brussels – The Council of Europe agreed yesterday to postpone Croatia’s entry into the human-rights organisation until it provides further proof of its democratic credentials.

Representatives of the 39 member-nations, meeting in Strasbourg, said they will draw up a list of conditions for Croatia to meet before they approve its membership.
Their decision marks the first time in the 47-year history of the Council that the member-nations have gone against a vote by the organisation’s parliamentary assembly. “And everyone in the world now knows the name of our town.”In addition, the establishment of the staging-post at Taszar, with 3,000 military personnel, has also boosted Hungary’s hopes of being one of the first former Warsaw Pact countries to be admitted to Nato.”The Hungarians have bent over backwards to ensure the success of this operation and provide every help they could,” said a diplomat in Budapest.Given Hungary’s strong interest in seeing a permanent end to the war in former Yugoslavia and the Brownie points it has already won with its would-be Nato partners, Budapest would be unlikely to oppose an extension of the base’s use as a staging-post for Bosnia.. “At the moment various options are being considered which could involve US or other Nato or other I-For forces remaining there. But I do not expect a decision until at least a day after the US presidential election in November,” said the diplomat.The returning troops would all go through Taszar and Kaposvar, as most did on their way into Bosnia. At the peak of the operation early this year, almost 1,000 trucks a day were thundering through the town as soldiers and equipment normally based in Germany were redeployed to Bosnia.As the noise subsided, residents focused more on the benefits: a huge injection of cash and hundreds of new jobs.