Given the US position on Iran, etc., this item from the morning paper is very interesting indeed. K.Mickey
Electronic Telegraph (London) ISSUE 1432Tuesday 27 April 1999
US refuses to join EU in oil embargo on Serbs By Christopher Lockwood, Diplomatic Editor, in Washington and Tim King in Luxembourg
THE European Union yesterday banned oil sales to Yugoslavia, but in a development that will be regarded as scandalous in European capitals, America confirmed that it had no plans to follow suit.
This means that while it is now illegal for any EU country to export oil to Slobodan Milosevic, it remains perfectly legal for American companies to continue to fuel the Serb war machine.
On April 10, two weeks into the conflict, the American firm Texaco shipped some 65,000 barrels of oil products into Bar, the Montenegrin port. The company said it was assured that the products were for use in Montenegro but the port now serves as Yugoslavia's only supply route for fuel. Other routes, including a pipeline from Hungary, or the land routes from Croatia and Bulgaria have effectively been cut off.
The disclosure that American firms have been selling oil to Yugoslavia while America pilots have been risking their lives to bomb refineries and storage facilities is likely to undercut American efforts to moralise to the rest of the world. Texaco has now publicly stated that it will no longer sell oil to Yugoslavia. But hundreds of other companies have yet to do the same.
A US State Department official confirmed there were no plans to introduce the same sort of legislation that EU foreign ministers yesterday adopted in Luxembourg, which renders it a crime to sell oil to Yugoslavia. The embargo will be implemented on Friday.
Nato's communiqué on Kosovo, published at the weekend, stops short of calling on all Nato members to adopt legal instruments to halt the flow of oil. What Nato is committed to do, however, is to interrupt the supply of oil, wherever it comes from, by means of a "visit and search" regime that will board and inspect ships heading for Bar.
Since international law says ships can only be halted in pursuit of a United Nations sanctions resolution, it is extremely uncertain what will happen if a Russian, or indeed an American, oil tanker declines to be searched. Russia has refused to join an oil embargo so the potential for conflict is high. If Russian ships were challenged on the high seas, it might decide to give them military escorts.
Further economic restrictions were also placed on Yugoslavia and it emerged that the European Commission would halt a promised package of economic assistance for Montenegro - lest it fell into "the wrong hands".