-Caveat Lector-
>From SF Chronicle
> NATO Bombing Left Serbian City in Toxic Nightmare
> Refinery, fertilizer plant and petrochemical complex destroyed
> Mark Fineman, Los Angeles Times Tuesday, July 6, 1999 ©1999 San
> Francisco Chronicle
>
> URL: http://www.commondreams.org/kosovo/kosovo.htm
>
>
>
> They call it ``The Night of the Witches,'' those horrible hours
> that began at precisely 1 a.m. April 18, when NATO bombs and
> missiles rained in force on Pancevo.
>
> Within seconds, the attack demolished a refinery, a fertilizer
> plant and an American-built petrochemical complex that released a
> toxic cloud so dense and potentially lethal that its effects can
> be felt here even today -- and will be, perhaps, for decades to
> come.
>
> A thick, grayish-white fog containing concentrations of
> carcinogenic vinyl chloride monomer that were 10,600 times above
> human- safety limits had settled over the city at dawn and
> finally cleared only at nightfall on a day of horror the
> townsfolk have named for the Serbian equivalent of Halloween.
>
> Nearly three months after NATO's devastating air strike here --
> and almost a month after it dropped the last bomb of its air war
> on Yugoslavia -- here's a glimpse of the enduring environmental
> nightmare in and around the targets the alliance left behind:
>
> -- Physicians in this city just 10 miles northeast of Belgrade
> have privately recommended that all women in town that night
> avoid pregnancy for at least the next two years. Women who were
> less than nine weeks' pregnant in mid-April were advised to
> obtain abortions; doctors say most have complied.
>
> -- The canal leading from Pancevo's South Zone Industrial Complex
> is still awash with vinyl chloride, even after much of the 100
> tons of cancer-causing chemical that were released from the Petro
> Hemija factory that night already have mixed into the waters, the
> riverbed and most likely the food chain of the mighty Danube
> River.
>
> -- The ground in and around Pancevo is saturated with ammonia,
> mercury, naphtha, acids, dioxins and other toxins that leaked and
> burned out of the factories that night, raising yet-unanswered
> questions about their long-term impact on a city now struggling
> with day-to-day survival.
>
> ``Only in the next two years or 20 can I tell you what the full
> consequences of that night will be,'' Pancevo's pro-democracy
> Mayor Srdjan Mikovic said yesterday. ``I'm afraid you will find a
> lot of our people in the oncology ward fighting cancer, or
> perhaps in the hematology department or centers for respiratory
> diseases, or perhaps in the morgue. But for today, it's enough to
> worry just how to get through the summer and the cold winter that
> lies ahead.''
>
> Although perhaps the most dramatic, Pancevo is hardly alone among
> the many environmental disasters that are legacies of NATO's war
> on Yugoslavia -- 78 days of aerial assaults on power plants,
> factories, fuel refineries and storage tanks. The alliance said
> these attacks were intended to ``degrade'' Yugoslav President
> Slobodan Milosevic's nation and war machine.
>
> The phones still are ringing wildly in Dr. Slobodan Tosovic's
> office at Belgrade's Public Institute of Health, where the chief
> ecotoxicologist fields questions and complaints from throughout
> the nation.
>
> Municipal officials in the opposition-ruled town of Kragujevac in
> the south, for example, are begging for permission to flush out a
> lagoon poisoned by PCBs, which were released from a power plant
> that NATO bombed.
>
> ``It's enough to make me believe the Americans and NATO were
> making a biochemical experiment with us,'' said Tosovic.
>
> But he downplays the short-term toxic impact of the war. ``The
> fact is, we were quite lucky,'' Tosovic said. ``We have the
> capacity to clean up the channel in Pancevo, and already we've
> cleaned up the worst-hit areas of the Danube and other rivers.
> There are no lasting air-pollution problems. And last week, we
> lifted the fishing ban on the Danube.''
>
> Initial tests of crops and farm animals, he said, have shown only
> marginal levels of toxicity, although he cautioned that ongoing
> DNA testing of embryos and seeds to determine the longer-term
> genetic impact of dioxins and other pollutants on the food chain
> will not be completed until the fall.
>
> The Serbian Health Ministry, which include Tosovic's department,
> also has issued an urgent advisory to physicians, urging them to
> stop recommending abortions and birth control -- an issue with
> broad political and sociological implications in a nation where
> 10 years of war-induced poverty among delicately balanced ethnic
> groups already have sent Serbian birthrates plunging.
>
>
>
> ©1999 San Francisco Chronicle Page A8
~~~~~~~~~~~~
>From Chicago Tribune
> SERBS ALLEGE NATO RAIDS CAUSED TOXIC CATASTROPHE
> BOMBED REFINERIES, PLANTS SPEWED STEW OF POISONS, THEY SAY
>
>
> By Uli Schmetzer
> Tribune Foreign Correspondent
> July 08, 1999
>
> PANCEVO, Yugoslavia Dragomir Djuric says he has been fishing the
> Tamis River for 48 years, pulling fat catfish out of its depths
> using live black leeches as bait.
>
> Unless they are eaten, he says, the leeches usually stay on the
> hook for five days.
>
> In recent weeks, something in the water has changed. He says the
> leeches die in a day, and are white when pulled out, looking as
> if they had been "boiled."
>
> The fish are different, too-- sluggish and sickly, with
> protruding bones and bulging eyes, he says.
>
> "I personally won't eat any fish from the river. Not for the next
> five years," said Djuric, president of the Tamis River Fishing
> Club.
>
> Djuric is unequivocal in fixing the blame. He thinks the water
> has been polluted by toxic chemicals released from a huge
> manufacturing complex here, the largest in the Balkans.
>
> Some storage tanks were hit in NATO airstrikes on the complex and
> on the nearby Lola-Utva airplane factory. NATO targeted the sites
> during its campaign to force Yugoslav forces out of Kosovo.
>
> NATO spokesmen said the facilities were "dual use," producing not
> only civilian chemicals and planes but also explosives and spare
> parts for the Yugoslav army.
>
> The Yugoslav government alleges the airstrikes at places such as
> Pancevo caused an environmental catastrophe in Serbia. Next
> month, the United Nations is scheduled to conduct a formal
> assessment of the environmental damage of the war.
>
> The UN investigation is headed by Pekka Haavisto, Finland's
> former environment minister. He said NATO has not been
> forthcoming in providing detailed information on its targets.
>
> "At this stage, NATO has not yet given us any detailed
> information showing the list of the targeted sites we got from
> the Yugoslav authorities," Haavisto said Wednesday in Geneva.
>
> In the absence of hard evidence or scientific data, many Serbs
> are expecting the worst and seeing peril all around them.
>
> Pancevo, a city across the Danube and 12 miles from the Yugoslav
> capital of Belgrade, is gripped with fear, compounded by the
> legendary fatalism and sense of victimization of the Serb nation.
>
> A young woman named Yelena, who asked that her last name not be
> used, said she had an abortion this week, fearful that the fetus
> she was carrying might have been harmed by the air she breathed
> and the water she drank.
>
> Her doctor advised her to have the procedure, she said, noting
> that her friends have been getting the same advice.
>
> Stories are circulating of outsized fruits and vegetables, of
> trees turning bright yellow in midsummer.
>
> The petrochemical and fertilizer complex that dominated the
> economy of this city of 120,000 is now virtually reduced to
> rubble by the NATO strikes. Warplanes rained missiles and bombs
> on Pancevo for nearly three months, from March 24 to the last
> raid June 8. The raids blew up storage tanks and released
> thousands of tons of toxic chemicals into the environment.
> Pancevo was enveloped in a noxious cloud of smoke and fumes for
> days.
>
> Yugoslav officials compounded the environmental damage. The mayor
> of Pancevo, Srdjan Mikovic, said workers dumped some 9,500 tons
> of ammonia into the Danube for fear the tanks holding it would be
> hit by NATO's repeated sorties.
>
> "Scientists told us that if the bombs blew the tanks, the ammonia
> would kill all life in the city and a wide radius," he said.
>
> He said that on April 15 a missile did strike a factory producing
> a highly toxic vinyl-chloride compound used to make plastic bags.
> According to the daily log the mayor kept during the bombing,
> "about 1,400 tons of ethylene dichloride poured out through the
> drainage into the Danube."
>
> Professor Mico Martinovic, a hydrologist, said the array of toxic
> chemicals released in the region "is unique in world history."
>
> "We have no idea what negative effects they will have on human
> life and the environment because we have no test analysis
> available," he said. "We can only suspect they polluted our
> entire watershed, the soil and the rivers."
>
> Government inspectors took samples after the raids but have not
> made the results available to independent academics, he said. "I,
> for one, am only drinking bottled water."
>
> However, most residents continue to drink and cook with the water
> from a local reservoir and eat fish from the Danube and Tamis
> Rivers. A government ban on fishing was lifted three days ago.
>
> "What was done against Pancevo was a crime against humanity,"
> said Mikovic, 39. "I never thought NATO or the Americans would
> bomb the petrochemical plant. I thought they were more
> civilized."
>
> According to the log he maintained, NATO bombed the chemical
> complex at Pancevo on 23 days, hitting it with at least 56
> missiles or bombs.
>
> On the night of April 18, for example, NATO bombers scored direct
> hits on facilities holding 1,500 tons of vinyl-chloride monomer,
> 250 tons of chlorine, 1,800 tons of ethylene dichloride and
> 15,000 tons of ammonia.
>
> Thousands fled the city, coughing and complaining of burning
> eyes, stomach upsets and choking. The fires raged as long as 12
> hours. Nearly a third of the toxic chemicals went up in smoke,
> Mikovic said.
>
> "Every few minutes, Belgrade would call and ask, `Is the cloud
> coming our way?' " he said.
>
> In the confusion, Mikovic said, air raid sirens mistakenly
> sounded the warning for a pending nuclear attack, sparking a mass
> exodus.
>
> "It was utter chaos," Djuric said. "Anything on wheels was
> moving. We have a monthly 20-liter quota of petrol, and I used up
> 15 liters just to get out of the city."
>
> Avram Izrael, director of Belgrade's Disaster Warning Center,
> said the capital was spared when the wind changed direction and
> carried the toxic cloud in the direction of Romania. "But only
> God knows how many people may be affected in the years to come,"
> he said.
>
> Pancevo officials say the central government in Belgrade
> downplayed the situation, concerned that the war effort would be
> undermined.
>
> Ofelija Backovic, general manager of the Pancevo Radio and
> Television Network, said her radio and television stations
> remained on the air 24 hours a day throughout the war. But she
> said they were threatened with shutdowns five times for divulging
> "military secrets" by broadcasting details about the bomb damage.
>
> Even now, many officials are reluctant to talk about the damage.
> At the emergency clinic in the city center this week, doctors,
> who are state employees, declined requests for interviews.
>
> But local residents complain of respiratory difficulties, burning
> eyes, choking sensations and upset stomachs.
>
> "If you went there they simply told you, `Go home and rest. In a
> few days you'll be better,' " Djuric said. "After eight days of
> stomach aches and burning eyes, I was eating again."
>
> Curcin Dusan, a local lawyer, said highly toxic mercury seeped
> into the ground around the petrochemical complex.
>
> "That means it is going into the underground water supply, and
> our water is poisoned. Leaves in houseplants are going black and
> streaky, and people like me want to know when we buy vegetables
> where they came from.
>
> "Around Pancevo we have an agricultural community, but few people
> want to buy their produce. Still, the farmers are selling it. No
> one told them not to sell."
>
> Dusan says he has contacted lawyers abroad in hopes of filing a
> damage suit against the United States on behalf of the people of
> Pancevo.
>
> "What they did in Pancevo is a real war crime, and I will make
> them pay for it," he said.
>
> Down by the river, fisherman Djuric held out his sun-parched
> hand: "Come back, my friend, in 10 years. Then you will find half
> the people of Pancevo are dead, just like the fish."
Not against the people of Serbia? To stop population
"cleansing"? Bad maps?
A<>E<>R
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