April 20, 1999
IN SERBIA
NATO's Blasting of Bridges Outrages Novi Sad's Citizens
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By STEVEN ERLANGER
OVI SAD, Serbia -- Army-green barges ferry people across the
Danube now, under what would have been the shadow of the Varadinski
Bridge.
Early in the morning of April 1, NATO planes destroyed both
spans of the bridge, which linked Novi Sad, Serbia's second-largest
city, with Petrovaradin and its famous medieval fortress, which
hugs the heights commanding the river. On April 3, NATO planes
destroyed a second, newer bridge, leaving one narrow span -- though
damaged in one lane -- for vehicle and railroad traffic.
The wreckage has also completely blocked the Danube, trapping
dozens of ships and tons of freight on either side of Novi Sad,
about 50 miles northwest of Belgrade. Every year about 10 million
tons of goods, mostly grain, coal and ores, travel up and down the
Danube.
NATO officials said the bridges were a crucial resupply link
from rich northern Vojvodina to Yugoslav forces fighting in
southern Kosovo. But Serbian officials -- and outraged citizens --
saw the destruction of the bridges as the beginning of what they
consider to be NATO's targeting of civilian infrastructure.
Students in Novi Sad, the capital of Vojvodina province, began a
protest campaign, including a nightly vigil on the last remaining
bridge, to try to keep NATO from destroying that one too.
For Nenad Kotovic, 25, a literature student with muscular
dystrophy, the loss of the bridges is more than a civic or cultural
tragedy. He is supposed to get regular treatment at a hospital in
Petrovaradin, he said Monday, "and how must I go there?"
In fact, he admits, he still can get there, but with enormous
difficulty. Traffic is restricted on the last of Novi Sad's
bridges, and people are so crammed onto the ferry, standing all the
way, that it worsens his illness, Kotovic said.
"This is useless destruction," he said. "What have these
bridges to do with Kosovo? It's just a form of torture for the
Serbs."
As for Kosovo itself, he said, Serbia would keep "what has been
ours for centuries." Asked about the reports of the expulsion of
ethnic Albanians, he said, "It is NATO that has destroyed the
friendship between the two peoples." No ethnic purging then? "I
don't know," he finally said. "I don't think so."
Kotovic spoke by the edge of the bridge, where it disappears
into the water. On what remains, there is a display of sculpture:
large papier-mache skulls; two wolves locked in combat, one biting
the throat of the other; and a Giacometti-like figure holding what
appears to be a sacrificed Paschal lamb, a reference to the recent
Orthodox Easter.
Kotovic was drawn here out of curiosity when he saw a busload of
journalists scurrying around. Brought on another of the Yugoslav
Army Press Center's tours of NATO bomb damage, the reporters were
told by their minders: "This is a group regime. No one is allowed
to work on their own."
But as usual, the minders were not terribly strict, though time
here was short. The purpose of the visit was to show the damage
inflicted early Monday morning, by a NATO missile, to a lovely
modernist building, constructed in the late 1930s, that houses the
Vojvodina provincial government.
The missile nearly missed the building, hitting the top floor
and causing moderate damage, though a lot of glass was broken
throughout and plaster fell in huge chunks from ceilings. A chunk
of beige missile, with a red stripe, bore the number EB02318. It
hit at about 1:30 a.m., when the building was empty, and no one was
hurt, the authorities said.
When reporters arrived Monday, employees were carting out
computers and electric typewriters. They had also salvaged a metal
bust of Tito, whose Yugoslavia has been dismembered over the last
10 years of fratricide.
There seemed no question in the minds of the Serbian authorities
that the missile might have been aimed to hit something else; there
were no other obvious targets nearby.
The damage outraged the head of the province's executive
council, Bosko Perosevic, who called it "an attack on Europe
itself, on one of the finest administrative buildings in Europe."
He called it "a special shame for the European countries of NATO"
and insisted that it was "a purely civilian building."
There was no evidence that the building contained anything other
than offices. Dr. Zdenka Milosavljevic, who runs the social welfare
and health department, was clearing out personal effects from her
office, which was carpeted with broken glass and plaster.
"We protect human beings here and their human rights," she
said furiously. "You see what they've done to us. What's the point
of hitting these offices? What were they thinking?"
