POLITICS-YUGOSLAVIA: Protests Over UN Takeover Of Mining Complex Continue

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Aug 22 2000 (IPS) - Peaceful street protests by the Serb community in UN-controlled Kosovska Mitrovica continued Tuesday over the takeover, by the UN administration, of a mining complex.

Zvecan is a lead smelting complex in the town, 35 kms north- west from the province’s capital of Pristina.

In a pre-dawn raid last week, 900 soldiers from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) stormed Zvecan, firing tear gas and rubber bullets, expelling Serb workers who were in the premises at the time.

Four KFOR soldiers were slightly injured as workers threw stones at them during the commotion. Six Serbs were injured by rubber bullets.

The official explanation given for the takeover, by the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), was that the plant represented “a serious health hazard”.

UNMIK, which has been administering the Kosovo province since NATO air raids against Serbia in 1999, says the level of lead in the air had reached 200 times the maximum recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

However, Kosovska Mitrovica’s remaining Serb community, of about 100 000 people, regard the joint KFOR and UNMIK action in a different light.

Zvecan, which is part of huge Trepca complex, is viewed by the Serbs as a guarantee for work and existence in Kosovo. Serbs argue that this complex, the only industrial site in Kosovo with huge job potential, would have become profitable in a matter of months, providing for hundreds and thousands of families.

“The Zvecan factory is our destiny, the foundations of our lives and security and no one has the right to gamble with it,” Oliver Ivanovic, a leader of Serb community in Kosovska Mitrovica, told IPS.

“The UN excuse of air pollution is cynical beyond all means, if one knows what bombs NATO used here,” he added.

During the 11 weeks of NATO air strikes in 1999, depleted uranium (DU) ammunition were used by the US A-10 bombers over Kosovo. NATO officials reportedly admitted that more than 30,000 DU shells landed there.

NATO says it launched its campaign in March 1999 to stop Serbia’s suppression of the rebellion by ethnic Albanians. As soon as the campaign began, Serb security troops took to mass expulsions of civilians, forcing almost a million Albanians to seek refuge in neighbouring countries.

When the NATO air raids ended in June 1999, more than 200 000 Kosovo Serbs fled the province fearing revenge at the hands of the returning ethnic Albanians.

Serbs in Kosovska Mitrovica fear that ethnic Albanian workers will be brought into the complex instead of them. Since June 1999, the town has been divided into a northern Serb and southern Albanian part. Zvecan, and most of the Trepca complex, are located in the north.

“The UN takeover of Zvecan is part of the scenario to expel the remaining Serbs from Kosovo under the false ecological pretext,” says another Serb leader from Kosovska Mitrovica, Milan Ivanovic.

“Blood tests in the last couple of months showed no traces of lead. The production in Zvecan is only 10 percent of pre-war (NATO air raids), so, obviously, there is something wrong with the UNMIK statistics on pollution”.

The Trepca firm’s mines in Kosovo account for three-quarters of Yugoslavia’s potential mineral wealth, according to official statistics.

The Trepca complex consists of 14 mines yielding lead, zinc, gold and silver as well as nine flotation plants, two metallurgy plants and 14 factories.

Between the two rounds of stringent international economic sanctions against Belgrade, Trepca managed to bring production to 42 million US dollars in 1996 and 1997.

At the time, it had about 5,000 workers. Only a few hundred were working in Zvecan at the time of UN takeover last week. The production was re-vitalised last June.

Ahead of the re-vitalisation, the head of the Trepca complex, Novak Bijelic, said that Trepca would produce 46,500 tonnes of lead, 25,000 tonnes of silver and 100 kilograms of gold this year. He promised the gradual return of some 2,000 workers to their jobs.

The UN apparently banned Bijelic from entering Kosovo from Serbia proper last week, saying he had been “uncooperative” in previous months. Bijelic has dubbed the UN takeover as “occupation”.

According to the UN Security Council 1244 resolution on Kosovo, the province is part of Serbia and Yugoslavia. In practice, however, it is a UN-run protectorate.

The fears of the Serbs in Kosovska Mitrovica were further aggravated when Bernard Kouchner, head of UNMIK, announced last Friday that an international consortium of mining companies had been hired to revamp the mining and metallurgy industry in northern Kosovo.

“Now we can get to work to bring Trepca back to life, and back to the people of Kosovo,” Kouchner told journalists in Kosovska Mitrovica.

He said some 16 million US dollars from the European Union, United States, France, Italy, Holland and Sweden would pay for the work which has been contracted to ITT Kosovo Consortium Ltd, a joint venture between TEC-Ingenierie of France, Sweden’s Boliden Contech and Morrison Knudsen International of the United States.

Kouchner defended the takeover, saying that parts of the UN resolution gave the UN administration the right to take care “of all industry in the province”.

His promise that all the Serb workers would be allowed to stay seemed not to disperse their fears.

“Our lives were nothing but a fight for survival since last June,” Dragisa Djokovic, an engineer from Zvecan plant says. “Those who headed the Zvecan plant ran to Serbia and now the UN is taking over. We can only hope that the promise to keep our jobs will be kept,” he adds.

For the time being, the UN administration is not willing to comment the fact that since 1996, Trepca is a shareholder company, with foreign capital involved. Two Belgrade-based banks and one insurance company, together with one company from France and one from Greece are Trepca shareholders.

The takeover prompted a fierce reaction from the Belgrade authorities who have called the move “illegal”.

“The forceful actions by the international presence cannot be evaluated other than as an attempt to seize property which doesn’t belong to them,” said an official statement of the Yugoslav government.

“The illegal and violent acts of KFOR and UNMIK have the aim of intimidating the remaining Serbs in Kosovo and taking over the national, economic and natural resources of the country,” the government statement said, adding that it would lodge a sharp protest with the UN Security Council and call for an urgent meeting of the world body’s power-wielding organ.