UN Views Results of NATO Bombing
Wednesday, 19 May 1999
K R A G U J E V A C , Y U G O S L A V I A (AP)
HALF-FINISHED YUGO cars hang from a huge assembly line under
gaping holes in the roof. Sheet metal dangles from the walls,
flapping in the breeze. The nearby foundry is a blackened
skeleton of twisted metal and ruined machinery, grim evidence of
the destructive might of NATO air power.
Little wonder that Yugoslav officials were anxious for a U.N.
inspection team to visit the wreckage of the 140-year-old Zastava
plant, once the pride of Yugoslav industry and maker of cars that
even the United States once imported.
Now local officials say the plant has been blasted out of business
- and its 36,000 employees put out of work - by NATO airstrikes,
devastating the local economy.
"I hope to God it stops soon," Mayor Veroljub Stevanovic said of
the bombing campaign, now in its eighth week.
The factory in Kragujevac, 62 miles south of Belgrade, was among
the first stops Wednesday for the U.N. team. Its members are
supposed to assess the scale of the humanitarian crisis gripping
Yugoslavia and what might be needed when the fighting stops.
The group later was to visit the war-ravaged Serbian province of
Kosovo, where NATO says Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic's refusal to stop the violent and brutal expulsion of
ethnic Albanians is what prompted allied bombing.
An "economic and social catastrophe" was the somber assessment
by U.N. team leader Sergio Viera de Mello after viewing the
destruction at the Zastava plant, which made cars, trucks, parts,
farm machinery and light weapons.
Frustrated, angry locals standing outside the plant didn't hesitate
to lob some verbal strikes toward the foreign visitors.
"What do they want?" asked Goran Dulic, 26. "They are cuddling
us with one hand and beating us with the other."
Zastava officials said the plant was hit by 20 missiles over a period
of two days in early April. Drajan Srejovic, Zastava's vice
president, said the damage amounted to about $1 million. A
heating plant that served the town was also damaged.
No one was killed in the attack, but plant officials said 124
people were injured, 24 seriously. NATO said it struck Zastava to
destroy an ammunition plant within the factory. The Zastava
"special purpose" plant used to be the state arsenal and the main
producer of infantry weapons and artillery pieces in former
Communist-run Yugoslavia.
That made little difference to local residents.
"What has the Yugo to do with Kosovo?" one local journalist
asked aloud, referring to the little car that often was the butt of
jokes in the West.
De Mello sought to remind his hosts that the key to ending their
woes lay in resolving the Kosovo crisis.
"I think it must remain clear what the central problem is," he
said. "Once that solution is found, the rest will follow."
In an earlier meeting with Kragujevac's mayor, de Mello said the
team was looking at what would be needed to rehabilitate
agricultural and basic services before winter "so as to reduce the
suffering as a result of these conflicts."
The deputy mayor in charge of health and social policy for
children and refugees, Vesna Pajevic, said the bombing "has had a
horrendous impact" on the city's children. "All of a sudden they're
experiencing in reality all the things they saw only in films."
Teams of psychologists have been organized to work with the
children, who "are asking 1,000 things we cannot answer," she
said.
Someone had hung a small poster on the door of the city hall
showing a skull in a U.N. helmet, with a caption that read: "This
photo shows that the U.N. is no better than NATO." A member
of the U.N. team took it with him. |
