U.N. Authorizes Naval Blockade Against Serbia

The Security Council on Monday toughened its embargo by authorizing a naval blockade against Serbia. The action came amid reports that scores of trucks and boats are still violating U.N. sanctions by crossing into Serbia and Montenegro with gasoline and other badly needed supplies.

The 15-member council voted 13 to 0, with 2 abstentions, for the blockade of the Adriatic Sea and the Danube River. Under the resolution, vessels suspected of carrying contraband may be stopped and searched. The order also authorizes the use of force but does not specify under what conditions.

NATO and the European Community’s Western European Union each reportedly have five frigates in the Adriatic, but they were not previously authorized to inspect vessels. The resolution urges Bulgaria and Romania to patrol the Danube.

Illicit traffic on poorly monitored roads and on water routes between the rump Yugoslav states and Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia--and even Russia and Ukraine--has become so prevalent that long lines of customers waiting for gas have all but disappeared in Serbia, diplomats and border officials in the area said.

The United Nations imposed sanctions on Serbia and Montenegro on May 31, restricting the shipping of petroleum products and other supplies in a move to pressure Serbia to end the bloodshed in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Bosnian Serb forces have seized about 70% of the republic’s territory.

As a result of the embargo, traffic in Serbia all but came to a halt this summer as gas lines became a common sight, snaking through the streets of Belgrade and other cities. Many gas stations closed, and tens of thousands of workers were sent on “forced vacations” because their factories could not run without fuel.

But after five months of sanctions, Serbia has secured fresh supplies through a wide network of black marketeers. Organized crime appears to be involved in some of the importing, officials said.

European diplomats also said the restoration of gas and other supplies has boosted morale in Serbia, a move that can only help Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and his ruling Socialists as they near local, federal and Serbian presidential elections, scheduled for Dec. 20.

Milosevic recently vowed that “Serbia will neither freeze nor go hungry. It will not allow state and national interest to be brought into question because of (outside) pressure.”

China and Zimbabwe abstained on the U.N. resolution because they said they felt that the Serb-led government of Belgrade has no real control over the Bosnian Serbs, whose campaign of aggression has been condemned around the world.

The council cited Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which it has used to enforce embargoes and bans on international weapons trade with Iraq and Libya. “The Security Council must adopt firm measures to deal with the problem,” Russian Ambassador Yuli Vorontsov said. “Bosnia-Herzegovina has been devastated.”

In Serbia, porous borders have allowed sufficient supplies to cross into the rump Yugoslav state so that at least 14 private gas stations have opened in the past two months. They are all licensed by Serbian authorities.

Serbia’s largest private banks, Dafiment and Jugoskandic, also have opened private gas stations. The banks--which diplomats say have close ties to the government--are providing customers who have hard-currency savings with exceptionally generous interest rates; this move puts more money in consumers’ hands to buy newly available goods and could stave off social unrest as the sanctions hit most of Serbia’s 9.8 million inhabitants.

Sanctions-busting also has encouraged a segment of the population to turn to crime in Serbia, where a flourishing black market offers a wide range of goods from grenades to gas. About 5% to 10% of the population is getting rich off the sanctions, said Dobrivoje Radovanovic, director of the Institute of Criminology in Belgrade. After 18 months of war with Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, “the black market is no longer illegal in Serbia,” he said.

Diplomats and border officials said that tankers bearing license plates from Serb-held cities in Bosnia cross the border daily into Bulgaria, Greece and Macedonia; they return laden with gasoline for Serbia.

Although both Greece and Bulgaria claim they are abiding by the U.N. sanctions, Bulgarian officials say that Greek tankers pour gas into Serbian trucks in Bulgaria. The vehicles reportedly then cross the border into Serbia on poorly monitored roads.

Western diplomats say petroleum products also are being shipped from Romania on the Danube. They also assert that oil supplies are coming from Russia and Ukraine.

“Petrol will always get into Serbia,” one truck driver said over the weekend. He refused to say which routes truckers take.

There are just 100 monitors posted on international borders of the former Yugoslav federation, and the Western naval fleet in the Adriatic has reported hundreds of violations but had lacked the power to intercept those violating sanctions, diplomats say.

Most truckers show falsified documents, claiming that their cargo is bound for Bosnia-Herzegovina or destinations beyond the former Yugoslav federation, diplomats and border officials say.

A customs official at Gevgelija, in Macedonia on the Greek frontier, said of the sanctions-busting drivers, “They no longer use the main border crossing but take other routes--at nearby Novo Selo, for instance.”

Last weekend, snow blanketed the winding mountain road to Kriva Palanka, a mining town in eastern Macedonia at the Bulgarian border, where a guard on the Bulgarian side estimated 1,000 tons of petroleum products a day are crossing the frontier. Macedonian frontier police say that despite its remote location, the road is one of many routes used to transport gas.