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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (3914)	4/15/1999 7:38:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17770

Would be an "interesting" development to see NATO bombing Russian ships.. Serbia scours oil market for fuel supplies 08:37 a.m. Apr 15, 1999 Eastern LONDON, April 15 (Reuters) - Serbia is scouring the Mediterranean oil market in a frantic effort to find petroleum product supplies to fuel its military needs, traders said on Thursday. ''They're desperate for diesel and they also want gasoline,'' said a London-based oil trader. Traders said a separate European trading company which has long supplied oil into Yugoslavia had put out an all-points request for a diesel shipment into the Yugoslav Adriatic port of Bar. ''I've been trying to cover a position there for some time but without any success,'' said an oil broker who works the Mediterranean market. Dealers said that their reluctance to supply any oil was due mainly to financial, rather than political, reasons. ''No one seems to want to make an offer, mainly because they don't expect to get paid,'' said one. Bar, in the Yugoslav province of Montenegro, appears to be Serbia's best bet for getting vital diesel supplies to run its tanks and armoured vehicles -- although NATO was reported to have closed the railway linking Montenegro to Serbia some 10 days ago. ''It wouldn't come in in big lots, it would come in smaller loads, and I'm sure there are plenty of people around who would do that sort of thing. We, of course, wouldn't,'' said a trader. The port of Bar, which has continued to operate during the conflict, was closed on Wednesday by the Yugoslav navy but was expected to reopen on Friday. Montenegro forms part of Federal Yugoslavia, but has been spared the worst of the bombing, with NATO anxious to avoid undermining the republic's reformist government. Since its military campaign started three weeks ago NATO has bombed Serbia's two refineries at Pancevo and Novi Sad and fuel depots in Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro. Supplies through Croatia's Adria pipeline on the Adriatic and the Hungarian spur of the Druzhba pipeline, which carries mostly Russian oil, were cut off early in the campaign. The delivery route to Serbia up the Danube from the Black Sea was blocked when NATO bombed bridges across the river. Last week NATO bombed a railway bridge on the route from Macedonia's Okta refinery, near Skopje, hitting a passenger train and killing 10 civilians. Shipping brokers in Italy said that oil tanker owners now were insisting that a clause be inserted into charter contracts to prevent their tankers going to Yugoslavia. ''Protective clauses are now beginning to appear for ships discharging in the Adriatic from the owners,'' said one Genoa-based broker. ''At the moment all the owners are excluding Yugoslavia, former Yugoslavia and Albania,'' said another. There are no sanctions in place which prohibit the sale of oil into Yugoslavia. An embargo covering fuel imports was lifted in 1995 following the Dayton peace treaty ending the war in Bosnia. But the United States says any oil shipments into the country are potential targets for NATO bombers. ''We have severely degraded (Serbia's) fuel supply and we know he is scrambling for new sources,'' Colonel P J Crowley of the National Security Council said on Wednesday. Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.