AS THE BRUTAL uprooting by the Serbs of almost a million Kosovars from their homes creates Europe's greatest humanitarian disaster since the Second World War, the tragedy of these people looks in danger of being worsened by indecision over what to do with them in the longer term - when their needs are most desperate right now.

For while we have admissions of governmental "failure of imagination" that Nato's air attacks would unleash terrible Serbian revenge on Kosovo's Albanian majority and accelerate the evil of ethnic cleansing, the bigger failure has been to anticipate this exodus and address it.

True, much of the horrific chaos visited on the tens of thousands of refugees lies not in a breakdown of the international aid agencies' capacity to help but in the reluctance of the government of swamped Macedonia to allow them to function, lest a well-assisted flood of arrivals upsets its own internal stability.

It is up to the UN and the Nato allies to brush aside Macedonia's obstructions, for the needs of these people are immense and immediate and must be met at once on the ground in Macedonia.

The politicking can come afterwards. The trouble is, it is already dominating the rescue efforts.

For we see Britain's policy on what to do with the refugees plunging into confusion.

Less than 24 hours after committing the UK to admitting thousands of ethnic Albanians Tony Blair said it was better not to remove them from the region.

It may be that he and others consider that dispersing these people far and wide would only assist Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic's evil programme of ethnic cleansing.

But keeping them where they are with the aim of returning them eventually to their homes also opens up the possibility of employing Nato troops on the ground to enable this - an eventuality which allied leaders have ruled out as yet, for fear of opposition from their own peoples.

It is a vexed issue.

But the need is for a common plan and policy - one providing the utmost benefit for the victims of this disaster.

However, right now, the real need is to give them the utmost help where they are.

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