NATO spokesman Jamie Shea (File photo)

By Dana Priest and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 25, 1999; Page A27

NATO announced a decision to use warships to enforce an oil embargo against Yugoslavia yesterday but ran into an immediate roadblock when several NATO countries questioned its legality and Russia vowed to continue as one of Belgrade's major suppliers.

NATO's defense ministers agreed in principle Friday to stop ships trying to deliver oil to Yugoslavia through Montenegro's Adriatic ports and to more aggressive bombing against roads and pipelines that carry oil from the coast to Yugoslav forces in Serbia.

The ministers will make a final decision on how to carry out the embargo in the next few days, said NATO spokesman Jamie Shea, after reviewing plans being developed by NATO's top commander, Gen. Wesley K. Clark. Doubts from some NATO governments and the opposition from Russia suggested, however, that Friday night's accord could still fall apart if Clark's plans do not meet with approval.

Clark particularly wants to interdict oil shipments coming into the Adriatic port of Bar in Montenegro, which is the junior partner with Serbia in the Yugoslav federation. The shipments, which grew to 50,000 metric tons over the last three weeks, are being used by Yugoslav forces in the crackdown against ethnic Albanian guerrillas and civilians in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

The defense ministers also discussed bombing and mining Montenegro's ports and oil shipment routes inside Montenegro, said European and U.S. officials. They expressed reluctance to embrace these tactics, however, for fear they might alienate the Western-oriented government of President Milo Djukanovic.

Oil refineries and storage tanks have been a primary target of NATO air strikes since the first day of bombardment March 24, but sea routes were not on the list. "It's absurd we didn't have a blockade at the start," said retired Adm. Leighton "Snuffy" Smith, who commanded NATO's southern region in the mid-1990s.

NATO has used its strikes against fuel-related targets as its most concrete example that the air war is working. Pentagon and NATO defense officials say air strikes have cut the Yugoslav Army's fuel supply by 70 percent and have destroyed the country's two oil refinery plants, in Novi Sad and Pancevo.

But U.S. intelligence reports show that Yugoslavia has been able to import oil from Russia, Ukraine and Greece. Many of the shipments first arrive at a port in Koper, Slovenia. From there, they are being picked up by other ships and brought to Bar, these reports say.

Although Clark has been pushing for some time to block the oil shipments, some NATO countries have been reluctant to interdict ships without authorization from the U.N. Security Council. The debate broke into the open yesterday, as some NATO leaders took issue with the wisdom of the defense ministers' willingness to proceed -- and Russia voiced flat-out defiance.

"Inspection is fine if the ship you want to inspect lets itself be inspected," said French President Jacques Chirac. "But imagine if the ship doesn't stop, then you have to intercept it. . . . Intercepting a ship on the high seas is an act of war in international law."

Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini said, "Indeed there have been those who expressed doubts about this." He nonetheless said he favors an embargo over heavy bombing.

Greeks "don't like very much" the idea of an embargo "because we have interests" in supplying oil, said Yiannis Drossos, head of Greece's Institute of Defense Analysis and a top defense official.

The difficulty of enforcing the embargo was reflected in President Clinton's ambiguous statement on the proposal yesterday. Repeating the argument that it is not fair to put pilots at risk to bomb oil-related targets while allowing oil to come in by ship, he added:

"Obviously, we don't expect it to and we will not do anything to try to see that it leads to violence. But we have to be firm about it. And if we want this campaign to succeed with economic and political pressure and with the air action, then we have to take every reasonable means to give it a chance to succeed."

The NATO defense ministers settled on an approach they call "visit and search" as less intrusive than a full blockade, Pentagon officials said. But it was unclear what NATO ships would do if a vessel refuses to be searched. Asked about use of force, national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger said: "It's certainly not ruled out in this."

Montenegro, which under Djukanovic has sought to distance itself from Serbia, has an agreement with NATO to continue to receive its normal oil shipments, according to Montenegro's justice minister, Dragan Soc. At the same time, NATO warships would control the entry and exit from Bar, he said.

"Our government is willing to accept this," Soc added.

Among Russia's objections is the widely held view that embargoes can only be imposed by the U.N. Security Council. "There are only 19 member countries in NATO, and NATO's decisions extend only to those countries that are a part of the alliance," Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told Vesti, a Russian television news program. "According to international law, sanctions or embargoes can be imposed only by the U.N. Security Council."

In a conversation with reporters in Cairo, which he is visiting, Ivanov added: "We cannot do anything to worsen the suffering of the people of Yugoslavia. We will continue delivering oil in keeping with our international commitments."

Pentagon officials said legal justification for the action comes from the international law of armed conflict, which permits disruption of deliveries of war material. They also cited Security Council Resolution 1160, passed in March 1998, preventing sale or supply of arms and related equipment to Yugoslavia.

Defense officials said there are sufficient naval forces in the Adriatic already to begin interdicting ships quickly once NATO gives the order. The United States has four cruisers and five destroyers, in addition to an aircraft carrier and three submarines. Other NATO allies have a total of four destroyers and eight frigates, according to Pentagon officials.

"If asked, we certainly can . . . have it in place in very short order," Adm. J.P. Reason, commander of U.S. naval forces in the Atlantic, told a Senate panel last week when asked how quickly NATO could begin halting ships.

But Reason added: "There are other routes, mainly over land routes -- trucks, pipelines, things of that sort -- which must also become part of the equation. You know, you will find people carrying it in five-gallon drums, if that's what must be done to have the commerce continue."

Staff writers William Booth in Podgorica, Montenegro, and William Claiborne, William Branigin and Charles Babington in Washington contributed to this report.