From: Guven.Guzeldere%STANFORD.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU (hq.ggg)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Serbian sanction buster threatens to spill oil
Date: 27 Jan 1993 22:10:32 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
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 -Serbian sanction buster threatens to spill oil if detained
 -Serbian artillery blasts Sarajevo
 -Bulgaria aksed to enforce U.N. sanctions against Serbia
 -Romania, Bulgaria say they helpless on barges

Subject: Serbian sanction buster threatens to spill oil if
detained

        WASHINGTON (UPI) -- A renegade Serbian barge captain
who has threatened to spill oil into the Danube River
escaped from Romanian sanctions enforcers and is steaming
toward Belgrade with a load of illicit diesel fuel, the
State Department said Tuesday.
        Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the
administration has told Romania and Bulgaria, which are
responsible for monitoring traffic on the river flowing
along their shared border to Serbia, that U.N. resolutions
authorizing sanctions against Belgrade call for ``all
necessary measures to stop vessels suspected of sanctions
busting.''
        American diplomats in Belgrade have been instructed
to inform Serbian authorities that they will be held
responsible for any willful environmental disaster, he said.
        ``We've also asked our embassy in Belgrade to put
the Serbs on notice that environmental terrorism is a war
crime and will be treated as such, '' Boucher said.
        The Bihac was intercepted on the Danube Wednesday
after taking on a load of diesel fuel in Ukraine.
        The Serbian captain was allowed to reclaim his barge
over the weekend after assuring the Romanians that he would
return to the Ukraine, State Department officials said. Once
under way, the captain reversed his course and set out for
Serbia, they said.
        The captain has threatened to spill oil into the
Danube or set his barge on fire rather than surrender it to
authorities, they said.
        In addition, they said, four other Serbian fuel
barges escaped from Romanian authorities ``shortly after''
and are headed for Serbia.
        Enforcing a sweeping economic and arms embargo
against Serbia for the mayhem it has caused in Bosnia-
Hercegovina is a major priority for the administration. But
there has been considerable leakage in the sanctions,
particularly along the Danube River.
        U.S. Customs Service and State Department personnel
have been dispatched to the region to help train locals
charged with enforcing the sanctions and to help plug the
leaks.
        ``We have been focused on these problems on the
Danube, where one of the loopholes has existed, and we will
continue to look at steps to tighten enforcement of the
sanctions,'' Boucher said. ``I wouldn't say that we've given
up on it.''
        Another U.N. initiative that the administration has
not given up on is the collection of information on alleged
war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, he said.
        Boucher said the administration submitted its fifth
compilation of abuses Tuesday to the U.N. War Crimes
Commission, which is charged with investigating and
prosecuting offenses committed in the former Yugoslavia.
        He said the information was extracted from
interviews with refugees, witnesses to abuse, intelligence
sources and by journalists.
        Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Colombia and
Canada have also submitted compilations of atrocities to the
commission, he said.
=========================================================================
Subject: Serbian artillery blasts Sarajevo

        SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (UPI) -- Serbian
artillery units fired indiscriminately into this Bosnian
capital Wednesday after one of the calmest days of the civil
war, with one round killing four people and injuring several
others as they waited outside the city's U.N. headquarters.
        The barrages came amid reports of an easing of
clashes around the central Bosnia-Herzegovina town of Gornji
Vakuf between the Muslim Slav-led Bosnian army and the
Croatian Defense Council, a heavily armed militia backed by
the rightwing regime of neighboring Croatia and known by the
initials of HVO.
        Serbian artillery fire hit at random across the
Muslim Slav-dominated capital of the shell-shattered former
Yugoslav republic. The heaviest was directedagainst the
sprawling residential neighborhood of Dobrinja on the
western edge of the city, officials said.
        At least four people were killed and several injured
when a shell exploded as they waited to enter the Sarajevo
headquarters of the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR),
located across from Dobrinja.
        The city's two main hospitals reported treating at
least 51 people for wounds. Doctors said a number of those
injured were children.
        Sarajevo radio warned the city's estimated 380,000
residents and refugees to remain in underground shelters.
        The capital has been beseiged and ravaged by
bombardments for almost 10 months by Serbian forces that
ignited the civil war in late March by setting out to
overrun a self-declared state proclaimed on some 70 percent
of the former Yugoslav republic.
        Serbian leaders, backed by the communist regime in
Serbia and armed by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army, seek
to merge their ``state'' in a ``Greater Serbia'' with Serb-
captured areas of neighboring Croatia, Serbia and
Montenegro.
        The latest barrages of Sarajevo came a day after
what UNPROFOR officials said was one of the quietest days of
the war in the city.
        They said that U.N. military monitors on Monday
observed no rounds hitting Serb-controlled areas, while 37
fell in parts of Sarajevo defended by the Bosnian army.
        Canadian Cmdr. Barry Frewer, a spokesman for
UNPROFOR, said that the situation around Gornji Vakuf was
easing, with British U.N. troops supervising withdrawals of
Bosnian and HVO fighters from the immediate area of the
predominantly Muslim Slav town under a cease-fire accord.
        ``The situation in Gornji Vakuf is much calmer than
it has been in the last several days,'' Frewer said.
        Sarajevo radio said that the Bosnian army and HVO
were respecting the cease-fire in Gornji Vakuf.
        But, it said that tensions stoked by the fighting in
Gornji Vakuf were still high around the nearby towns of
Busovaca, Vitez, Travnik, Novi Travnik and Kiseljak.
        Frewer said that at 4:25 p.m. Tuesday, a sniper
round hit the car of French Gen. Phillipe Morillon, the
UNPROFOR commander in the republic, while he was driving
through the Busovaca area.
        Morillon was returning from a tour as part of an
effort to end clashes between Bosnian troops and HVO
fighters.
        Frewer said the incident occured just south of the
village of Kacuni, with the sniper's bullet hitting the
vehicle's side-view mirror. But, he added, that there was no
indication that Morillon was specifically targeted in an
area where such attacks are frequent and random.
        The Muslim Slav-Croat clashes erupted when Bosnian
troops apparently refused to relinquish control of Gornji
Vakuf to the HVO. The town would be in one of three Croat-
dominated provinces that would be created under the peace
plan proposed by international mediators Cyrus Vance and
Lord David Owen.
        The plan would divide the republic into 10 largely
self-ruling provinces. The Muslim Slavs, Christian Orthodox
Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats would each dominated in
three provinces. The 10th around Sarajevo would be neutral.
        In Geneva, Vance and Owen pressed Bosnian President
Alija Izetbegovic, a Muslim Slav, and Bosnian Croat leader
Mate Boban, the titular chief of the HVO, to sign a truce
accord.
        The fighting has ruptured an anti-Serb alliance of
convenience between the Bosnian army and the HVO.
        There were reports of heavy clashes in other areas
of the republic.
        State-run media in Belgrade said Bosnian forces
pressed an offensive to re-capture Rudo, a town in
predominantly Muslim Slav eastern Bosnian-Herzegovina
overrun early in the Serbian land-grab offensive.
        Sarajevo radio reported heavy fighting around Brcko
and sporadic clashes at Zavidovici, Maglaj and Konjic.
=========================================================================
Subject: Bulgaria aksed to enforce U.N. sanctions against
Serbia

        SOFIA, Bulgaria (UPI) -- The United States asked the
Bulgarian and Romanian governments to enforce the embargo
against Serbia after a load of diesel fuel slipped through
their custom checkpoints, a Bulgarian government official
said Wednesday.
        ``The commmunication of the U.S. State Department,
sent also to the Romanian authorities, emphasizes that
Resolution 787 of the Security Council of the United Nations
gives the right and obliges the Bulgarian and the Romanian
governments to apply all the neccessary measures to stop
cargo from going to Serbia,'' said a spokesman of the
Bulgarian government.
        The spokesman did not say if the Bulgarian
government would impose concrete actions in response to the
State Department demand.
        The request by the United States comes after a
convoy of six barges, suspected of carrying 6,000 tons of
Ukranian diesel fuel, sailed up the Danube river into
Serbia. The barges, towed by the Serbian tugboat Bihach,
passed sections of the Danube controlled by Bulgaria and
Romania and on Tuesday entered Serbian waters.
        Bulgarian customs officials said they were did not
stop the convoy because it was sailing along the middle of
the river considered, in accordance with the international
convention on the Danube, to be international waters.
        ``At no time did the Bihach enter Bulgarian
waters,'' Ivan Kirilov, captain of a Bulgarian border patrol
boat that shadowed the convoy.
        Customs officials said that they had signaled the
Bihach to stop many times but the captain had refused. They
said that they could have applied force only if the convoy
had entered Bulgarian waters.
        Bulgarian border authorities said that three more
Serbian tugboats, towing 24 barges suspected of carrying
some 24,000 tons of diesel fuel from Ukraine, had entered
the Danube from the Black Sea late Tuesday night and were
making their way in international waters towards Serbia.
=========================================================================
Subject: Romania, Bulgaria say they helpless on barges

        BUCHAREST, Romania (UPI) -- Romanian and Bulgarian
authorities, defending themselves against U.S. pressure to
enforce the Serbian trade embargo, said Wednesday they were
helpless to stop petroleum barges from using the Danube
River.
        The U.S. government appealed to the countries after
an incident Tuesday in which a renegade Serbian boat captain
was allowed to travel to Serbia after he threatened to dump
or set fire to his 6,000-ton cargo of diesel fuel.
        The two countries, who share the Danube as their
mutual border, said they could not legally take action
against the six-barge convoy because the center of the river
is legally international waters.
        Romania also did not try to stop the six-barge
convoy because it wanted to avoid ``the loss of human life
and prevent excessive and irreparable damage,'' government
spokeswoman Diona Jalea said on state radio.
        The U.S. State Department said Tuesday it told the
two countries it considered them responsible for monitoring
traffic on the river and enforcing the U.N. sanctions
imposed against Serbia for its role in the Yugoslav war.
        ``We've also asked our embassy in Belgrade to put
the Serbs on notice that environmental terrorism is a war
crime and will be treated as such, '' State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher said.
        The United Nations, through Security Council
Resolution 787, has banned all trade with Serbia and
neighboring Montenegro, the leftovers of the former Yugoslav
federation.
        The captain of the Serbian tugboat Bihac, which
Tuesday towed six barges up the middle of the Danube into
Serbian waters, had said he would set fire to his 6,000 tons
of Ukrainian diesel fuel unless Romania allowed it to pass,
state radio reported.
        Romanian officials said Wednesday they still would
pursue legal action against the crew of the Bihac and any
other violators of the U.N. sanctions, but also said they
needed technical assistance to help their enforcement.
        President Ion Iliescu met in an emergency session
with key Cabinet members to discuss the matter.
        Bulgarian border authorities said three more Serbian
tugboats towing 24 barges suspected of carrying 24,000 tons
of diesel fuel from Ukraine entered the Danube late Tuesday
from the Black Sea and were headed for Serbia along the
middle of the river.
        International observers sent to enforce the U.N.
trade embargo against the former Yugoslavia are stationed at
strategic points on the Danube. But they have said they are
unable to stop ships steaming up the middle of the river,
where they do not enter Romanian or Bulgarian waters.
        Bulgarian authorities also confirmed Wednesday that
they were unable to halt the Bihac.
        ``At no time did the Bihac enter Bulgarian waters,''
said Capt. Ivan Kirilov of the Bulgarian border patrol,
whose boat shadowed the convoy.
        Bulgarian customs officials said they signaled the
Bihac to stop several times, but said the captain refused.
        ``The commmunication of the U.S. State Department,
sent also to the Romanian authorities, emphasizes that
Resolution 787 of the Security Council of the United Nations
gives the right, and obliges the Bulgarian and the Romanian
government to apply all the neccessary measures to stop
cargo from going to Serbia,'' a Bulgarian government
spokesman said.
        The Bihac was intercepted last week on the Danube
after taking on a load of diesel fuel in Ukraine. The
Serbian captain was allowed to reclaim his barge over the
weekend after assuring the Romanians that he would return to
the Ukraine, State Department officials said.
        But once underway, the U.S. officials said, the
captain reversed his course and set out for Serbia.
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