Lowering The Boom

IN SPITE OF ECONOMIC SANCTIONS IMPOSED UPON Yugoslavia on May 30, massive smuggling of gasoline keeps traffic heavy on the streets of Belgrade. Though the economy is a shambles, the regime of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic has still not been brought to its knees. And the war rages on.

Instead of lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia, as Arab countries have urged, the United Nations decided to administer a stiffer dose of the same medicine. The Security Council plugged the loopholes in its leaky sanctions by banning shipments through Yugoslavia of strategic goods such as petroleum products, coal, steel and chemicals, which until now have been easily diverted from imaginary destinations in Bosnia or elsewhere. While Romania and Bulgaria stiffened controls on the Danube and their borders, frigates from NATO members (including the U.S.) and the nine-nation Western European Union in the Adriatic were authorized to begin stopping sanction busters bound for Montenegro. The West hopes the pressure now being applied will unseat Milosevic and take the air out of the Serbs’ war efforts in Bosnia. But it might lead Serbs and Montenegrins to a greater sense of shared victimhood. (See related story on page 47.)