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BUDAPEST, Sept 28 (AFP) - Shipping on the Danube river, part of which is blocked by bridges destroyed during the NATO war against Yugoslavia, is to remain closed until the spring, the Danube River Commission said Tuesday.
"Three or four months are needed to clean the riverbed," commission member Istvan Dobri told AFP after the 11-member body held an informal session here Tuesday.
Yugoslavia should prepare a plan to clean the river, Dobri told AFP by phone, saying Belgrade had agreed to provide an answer by October 1 on whether it would take on the task.
Even if the plan is ready by the end of October, "three to four months are needed to clean the riverbed, and this work should be done by cranes on ships. But you cannot send ships in January or February," Dobri said.
The plan would also create the basis of a cost analysis, to be presented to potential sponsors who would finance the project, he said.
"If Yugoslavia says it cannot prepare the plan, or cannot prepare it alone, then the Danube Commission must help it," he added.
The Budapest-based commission is made up of 11 countries that lie along Europe's main waterway, the Danube river. Yugoslavia remained a full member in the commission all along and after the Kosovo conflict.
To clean the shipping route would cost between 15 and 30 million euros (15.5 to 31.1 million dollars) according to experts, and "sponsors are not flocking to finance the costs," said Dobri.
"Not even the European Union seems ready to tackle this issue as yet," he said.
Hungary's Economy Minister Attila Chikan also criticised the EU Tuesday for its lack of movement towards reconstruction in Yugoslavia, including removing the ruins of bombed bridges.
"Unfortunately, I see very little movement on the side of the EU in this direction. ... There should be a much more practical approach to the whole thing -- at least to the most important things," he told journalists Tuesday.
Chikan said Hungary, an immediate neighbour of Yugoslavia, could be directly hit if winter freezing on the blocked river creates floods upstream, as it happened in the past in Hungary.
"We could have a big-big flood with Hungary directly involved," he said.
He added that the EU, which Hungary hopes to join around 2002, should actively take part in building a new Yugoslavia.
"Europe and the EU are making a mistake if they do not create a new Balkans with a higher economic level. They should create a new partner and not a new trouble zone," he said.