Kosovo girl resurfaces, pleads to stay in Austria

By Alexandra Zawadil

UNGENACH, Austria (Reuters) - Clutching a teddy bear and wiping away tears, a Kosovo girl of 15 who went into hiding in Austria to avoid being deported with her father and four siblings said on Friday she yearned to be reunited with them.

Last month's expulsion of the ethnic Albanian Zogaj family and daughter Arigona's fight to stay in a country they regarded as home after five years triggered a debate about deporting foreigners who integrate only to lose appeals for asylum.

Arigona put herself in the care of a rural priest, a few dozen km (miles) from her home in central Austria, after officials announced she need not fear deportation pending a constitutional court ruling due in December.

She had threatened in a video message shown on television last week to kill herself if her family was not reunited.

Appearing in public for the first time, she said she was keen to return to school and study to be a hair stylist.

But most of all she wanted her father and four siblings back from a Kosovo she said seemed foreign.

"I speak only a little Albanian, I don't know anyone in Kosovo any more," she said in fluent German.

"I lived through the war there and I just had nightmares about it again," she said, referring to the 1998-99 Kosovo Albanian uprising against Serbian oppression. Arigona had woken up screaming overnight, elderly pastor Josef Friedl said.