The French Foreign Minister, Hubert Vedrine, says there are now about two-hundred-thousand displaced ethnic-Albanians in Kosovo.

Mr Vedrine said the figure was the most reliable to date, and that the displaced people were grouped in three different regions of the province.

Previous estimates have put the number much higher.Latest UN figures suggest more than six-hundred-thousand people have fled Kosovo -- half of them to Albania. More than a-hundred-thousand are in Macedonia, and almost seventy-thousand in Montenegro.