NATO wants voluntary oil embargo

Countries that ship to Yugoslavia won't be attacked.

The Financial Times

BRUSSELS -- NATO is moving away from plans for an oil blockade against Yugoslavia backed by the threat of force, but will press instead for the broadest possible voluntary agreement not to supply fuel to the country. Countries that refuse to agree to stop oil deliveries and submit their ships to NATO searches might be subject to "naming and shaming" and multiple diplomatic protests, senior diplomats said. But the likelihood that NATO's "visit and search" regime in the Adriatic Sea won't be backed by the threat of military action against those trying to circumvent it is a setback for the U.S. and Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO's supreme military commander. Both had made clear they favored a "coercive regime." At its 50th anniversary summit in Washington last month, NATO had ordered plans for a "visit and search" regime to stop tankers delivering fuel to Yugoslavia. NATO has been angered and embarrassed that its bombing of Yugoslavia's oil storage and refining facilities has been undermined by continuing maritime deliveries to the port of Bar in Montenegro. But a regime backed by force was opposed from the outset by countries such as France, which warned it would be illegal under international law unless backed by a United Nations Security Council resolution or an official declaration of war against Yugoslavia. French diplomats warned that boarding a ship without its agreement was an "act of war." NATO now is likely to use the European Union oil embargo against Yugoslavia, agreed last month, as a model for the new policy. Last Thursday EU states issued a declaration that they would be prepared to see ships under their jurisdiction stopped and searched to make sure they weren't carrying oil. "Where things go now is to make sure that a lot of other countries also make the same declaration," said one senior NATO diplomat. Both the 15-nation EU and 19-nation NATO are expected to put pressure on all countries with which they have a relationship, particularly candidates for membership or with which they have partnership agreements, to sign up to the voluntary regime. "It will be an efficient regime," said the diplomat. "But, at the end of the day, this regime as it is now conceived is not coercive."

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