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

To: John Lacelle who wrote (5740)	4/28/1999 4:26:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

No sign of ''oil rush'' to Yugoslav port 01:38 p.m Apr 28, 1999 Eastern By Richard Meares BAR, Yugoslavia, April 28 (Reuters) - NATO claimed the main Yugoslav port was crammed full of ships off-loading oil around the clock, but Bar was bare on Wednesday. ''As you can see there are just two ships in Bar today, loading wooden goods for export from Montenegro,'' said Dragan Nikezic, who manages port handling services in the Adriatic port. The refined-oil terminal stood still on the hillside above the empty dock. Nor was there anywhere to hide the 10 tankers a day that NATO supreme commander General Wesley Clark said on Tuesday were part of a dash to supply Yugoslavia with fuel before the Western alliance tries to enforce a newly agreed oil embargo. ''There are no tankers, we have no plans for tankers, and the last one was here on April 23,'' Nikezic told reporters at the head offices of Yugoslavia's only sizeable port. A shipping agent at Bar on Wednesday said the terminal could not handle the kind of volumes NATO had mentioned. Miloraed Kristic, general manager of Jugo Agent, one of the largest shipping agents operating at the port, told Reuters by telephone that 10 vessels with a capacity of 10,000 deadweight tonnes to 15,000 deadweight tonnes would take 25 days to discharge. ''I read it this morning: 10 tankers daily. Where? It's impossible because it is prohibited for tankers to dock alongside like that by the harbourmaster,'' he said. The director of Jugopetrol, which imports petrol, diesel and other oil derivatives through Bar, said that since the NATO bombing campaign began five weeks ago, only nine tankers had come to Bar with a total of 47,000 tonnes of oil products. He said this had gone exclusively to civilian use in Montenegro, the tiny sister republic of Serbia in Yugoslavia which has tried to stay neutral in the Kosovo conflict. It was a slow day in the port but far from a quiet one, as the Yugoslav navy base right alongside fired a half-hour barrage of heavy anti-aircraft fire at passing jets presumed to be from NATO, making the ground shudder. NATO's oil embargo, under which it will try to stop tankers heading into Bar, is seen here as an alternative to just bombing the port to pieces to ensure no oil could be delivered. NATO is trying to spare Montenegro from material damage. Workers have demonstrated against the army's repeated firing on NATO planes passing overhead on their way to missions in Serbia, saying it just increases the chances of destruction here. Montenegro refuses to recognise Belgrade's declaration of a state of war, and has appealed to be exempted from the oil embargo which it says would devastate its small economy. It says it will ensure no oil reaches Serbia. But the Yugoslav Army based in the republic is at war and NATO's aim with the embargo is to cut off its fuel supplies. The army says that in wartime, it has the right to commandeer whatever supplies it needs but Montenegro's government, which controls a loyal paramilitary police force it has strengthened recently, says it will stop it if it tries. The oil embargo could worsen the already tense relations between the two rival forces that have led Montenegrin officials to accuse the army of plotting a coup. During sanctions imposed over Bosnia from 1992 to 1995, Serbia got most of its oil by illegal traffic on the Danube, across the border from Macedonia, or across a lake from Albania to Montenegro. With some of these routes now blocked and Serbia's refineries pounded, Bar -- which has two tanker berths and oil storage capacity of over 600,000 barrels -- has taken on a greater significance. Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.

To: John Lacelle who wrote (5740)	4/28/1999 5:21:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 17770

Now this is beyond belief, words fail me to find adjunctive!!! The fact that 40,000 Serb troops remained in Kosovo despite 35 days of NATO bombing, Clinton said, ''is an indication of the trouble they're having. If they had no problems, they wouldn't need the troops.'' infoseek.go.com like preparing for ground invasion....This is not funny...