NATO takes over mine complex in Kosovo
The Associated Press
ZVECAN, Yugoslavia (August 14, 2000 1:06 p.m. EDT
http://www.nandotimes.com) - In a pre-dawn raid likely to heighten tensions
in the region, NATO-led peacekeepers took control of a Serb-run mining
complex in the northern part of Kosovo on Monday.
Hundreds of NATO-led peacekeepers cordoned off the 200-square-yard
area around a massive smelting complex that U.N. officials claimed was
spewing dangerous amounts of lead into the atmosphere. Clouds of smoke
belched from aging chimneys while Italian police and soldiers from France,
Britain, Belgium and Denmark swept in.
Serb sources say as many as 800 NATO troops took part in the takeover,
though NATO sources put the number slightly higher. Kosovo Serb leader
Oliver Ivanovic said plant workers told him NATO troops "just appeared out
of nowhere."
Only a handful of workers were on hand when the operation began at 3:45
a.m., Ivanovic said.
NATO-led peacekeepers - some wearing face masks because of the
smoke - came within yards of the crumbling communist-era complex before
being stopped on a footbridge leading into the facility. After hours of
negotiations with plant officials, peacekeepers took over, U.N. spokesman
Michael Keats said.
One security guard was slightly injured in a scuffle with peacekeepers when
he resisted NATO's arrival.
Later, Serb residents protesting the takeover threw stones at NATO troops.
A couple of journalists were roughed up in the scuffle. Three British soldiers
were slightly injured, said NATO spokeswoman Kath Hurley.
NATO had no reports of civilian casualties, but the Belgrade-based Beta
independent news agency said a Serb man and child were injured in a
scuffle with British troops.
Bernard Kouchner, Kosovo's top U.N. administrator, stressed that the
closure was only temporary, and workers would return to work "as soon as
possible."
Kouchner said the takeover was necessary to end a health risk, adding
160 people had been hospitalized in the past year for treatment for lead
poisoning. Last week, U.N. officials said lead levels from the plant were
200 times World Health Organization norms.
"As a doctor and as chief administrator of Kosovo, I would be derelict if I let
this threat to the health of children and pregnant women continue for one
more day," Kouchner said in a written statement.
Yugoslav Information Minister Goran Matic protested the NATO action,
calling it a "robbery" and violation of a U.N. resolution that allowed the
troops to operate in Kosovo.
"It is an anti-Serb demonstration of power against unarmed people," Matic
told the state-run Tanjug news agency.
Trepca is an emotional symbol for the people of this southern Serb
province, who are struggling to rebuild after the 78-day NATO air war
aimed at forcing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end his
repression of ethnic Albanian residents.
The main employer of Serbs in the industrial north until last year, the
smelter is part of the Trepca mining complex, a group of about 40 mines
that produce gold, silver, lead, zinc and cadmium.
Steve Wingate
Anomalous Images and UFO Files
http://www.anomalous-images.com
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