U.N. Takes Over Mining Complex in Kosovo

ByABC News
August 17, 2000, 5:01 AM

Aug. 17 -- The most important economic asset in Yugoslavia, the Trepca mining complex, is now firmly in the hands of a NATO-led peacekeeping force (KFOR) and the U.N. Interim Administration in Kosovo.

We are now the administration of all the complex of Trepca, announced the U.N.s chief of mission in Kosovo Bernard Kouchner.

The pounce on Kosovos main asset, previously controlled by Serbs and managed by bosses appointed by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade, confirms the worst fears of Kosovos dwindling Serb minority.

Kouchner was visiting the Zvecan lead smelting plant which was seized by 900 KFOR troops from Britain, France and Denmark in a dawn raid on Monday.

Rejected NATO Demands

It has been closed down. Serb bosses had refused to listen to NATOs demand that it should be shut down for repairs because it was polluting the whole region.

Lead emissions in the atmosphere were 200 times the maximum considered safe. Poison smoke now no longer belches from its chimneys.

The first act by the new U.N. administrators, who were hassled and pelted with stones as they moved in, was to throw out the Milosevic-appointed boss Novak Bjelic, who refused to comply with the order to close down the plant.

The U.N. has offered to pay layoff wages of $24 a month to the 600 employees at the lead plant. This is more than they were paid on the job by Belgrade.

In spite of radical Serb pickets half of them have taken up the offer so far. Half again have volunteered blood tests, since the U.N. suspects that their health could have suffered permanent damage.

A 500-strong contingent of KFOR troops, most of them British, have been withdrawn from the area, which is now secured by the French and Danes.

The U.N. and the KFOR will now get their first chance to try to check out claims that hundreds of bodies of Kosovo Albanians were incinerated in some of the complexs blast furnaces, particularly in a nickel smelting plant.