NEWS ANALYSIS : Tougher Yugoslav Sanctions Unlikely to Get Fast Results

Despite tough new measures to plug leaks in the U.N. sanctions against Serb-run Yugoslavia, neither Serbian political moderates who are struggling to restore the peace nor Western governments monitoring the embargo believe the effort will soon be successful.

On the contrary, they warn, the West’s drive to starve warmongers into submission could have the reverse effect of strengthening the hand of extremists who are trying to persuade Serbs that they are the targets of a global conspiracy.

Geography, nationalist intransigence and the ruthless realities of supply and demand are working against Western efforts to force an end to the Balkan war by applying economic pressure on those accused of fomenting it.

“The new sanctions will discourage the most glaring abuses, but probably in the end the new measures won’t plug all the loopholes,” said a European diplomat in Belgrade. “They are very resourceful, the Serbs. In three to four months, the sanctions should really hit.”

That may not be soon enough to influence Yugoslavia’s political course, which will be decided in parliamentary and presidential elections on Dec. 20.

Belgrade television and other key mass media remain firmly in the nationalists’ hands. That has allowed them to mold public opinion and to encourage the ostracized Serbs to stand up to what has been cast as a sinister plot to obliterate their nation.

Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic complained after the U.N. vote that the attempts to punish Serbia are backfiring, rallying support around Serbia’s strongman president, Slobodan Milosevic. Panic left his Southern California pharmaceuticals empire in July to take over the federal Yugoslav government. He promised the public then that he would get the international sanctions lifted within three months.

But the more the international community tightens the economic noose around the rump Yugoslavia, Panic and other moderates warn, the less credibility they have with confused citizens and the lower their chances for successes by moderates in the coming elections.

Prices are soaring in Yugoslavia, where inflation has been running at a six-digit annual figure because of the government’s massive outlays for the 18-month-old war. But most commodities are still available, if at a steep price, because the rump Yugoslav federation is by nature a smuggler’s paradise.

Many families in Serbia also have hard-currency income, despite the economic crisis. It is provided by the hundreds of thousands of Yugoslavs who work in Western countries and send money home. That ensures a steady market for contraband, no matter how high the dinar price.

Meantime, smugglers have found that getting by the overwhelmed monitors is little problem. The two surviving Yugoslav republics, Serbia and Montenegro, have nearly two dozen obscure border crossings into Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania, not to mention the numerous other land routes accessible through Macedonia, the former Yugoslav republic that exists in a diplomatic limbo.

Further, almost 250 miles of the Danube River flow wide and meandering through northern Serbia, including past the major oil-refining city of Pancevo, where tankers reportedly have been making round-the-clock deliveries.

Secluded ports within Montenegro’s Kotor Bay offer other opportunities for secret offloading of goods, although only the Adriatic Sea terminal at Bar is believed to be capable of receiving oil.

Petroleum products have been the chief target of the U.N. sanctions imposed May 30, with the nations of the Security Council hoping that reductions in supplies of gasoline and heating fuels would encourage Yugoslav citizens to reconsider support for nationalists like Milosevic.

But the gas lines that had kept customers waiting as much as a week in early autumn suddenly disappeared about two weeks ago, as Milosevic and his Serbian Socialist Party kicked off their campaigns to win reelection.

The blatant appearance of oceans of cheap fuel highlighted major loopholes in the nearly six-month-old sanctions and prompted the Security Council to order tougher enforcement.

At its session Monday, the 15-nation body authorized a naval blockade of Serbia and Montenegro, including the right of monitors to use force to stop vessels suspected of violations. The council also urged Romania and Bulgaria to take embargo enforcement more seriously, especially along their stretches of the Danube where many oil tankers have been passing unimpeded.

The transshipment of oil, metals, chemicals and other strategic goods across the rump Yugoslavia has been banned; the U.N. peacekeeping mission may be expanded to allow troops to monitor the borders of Bosnia-Herzegovina to ensure that no troops or weapons are being sent in.

Calin Marinescu, Romania’s deputy transport minister, indicated immediately after the U.N. action that Bucharest was stepping up cargo checks on the Danube. Bulgarian authorities also have sent more inspectors to border crossings, where Yugoslav truckers have reportedly made clandestine swaps of fuel and tankers with the Greeks; the Greeks have close traditional ties with Serbia and have shown some reluctance to inconvenience old friends.

Even with the best of official intentions, the region’s economic crisis works against effective enforcement. Romania, Bulgaria and Albania are the poorest countries in Europe, making it difficult for their governments to discourage sanctions-busting by smugglers who have few other prospects for earning a living.

Western diplomats in Belgrade, the joint Serbian and Yugoslav capital, as well as envoys in this capital of Croatia, warn that the new measures will be successful only if the number of monitors increases along with their powers of enforcement. Just a few dozen observers from the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe are assigned to watch the numerous and remote border crossings into Yugoslavia, making 24-hour surveillance impossible.

The ban on oil shipments to the rump Yugoslavia holds the potential to cut into Yugoslav fuel supplies, once current stocks are depleted, diplomats said. But whether the stricter measures will deter sanctions-busting is only half the issue. If the aim is to change the policies of the Serbian and Yugoslav leaderships, moderates say, the tighter the blockade, the more those affected will turn to Milosevic.

“They think that the sanctions will help get rid of the regime,” but it will do otherwise, Panic said Wednesday. Yugoslav Foreign Minister Ilija Djukic called the new steps “biased and unjust” but promised that federal officials will not seek to break the blockade.

Another Panic ally in the federal government, peace negotiator Ljubisa Rakic, said that average Serbs should not be the target of the punitive measures, but “other elements responsible for conducting policy in our new state.” He appeared to refer to the organized crime leaders loyal to Milosevic. They have been profiting from the embargo by setting up shady concessions that enrich the few and enhance their power.

No signs of wavering in the face of more concerted Western action were visible among the nationalists. Milosevic, in a speech last weekend, met the threatened U.N. clampdown with his usual defiance, insisting that his fellow Serbs “would neither starve nor freeze.”

At a nationalist rally in the Serb-conquered Croatian city of Vukovar, warlord and parliamentarian Vojislav Seselj vowed Wednesday that “Serbia will never be brought to its knees.”

“The international community is trying to weaken Serbia, the source of strength for all Serbs,” said Seselj, who commands a guerrilla force blamed for widespread war crimes in Bosnia.

Times special correspondent Laura Silber in Belgrade contributed to this report.