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BUDAPEST, Hungary -- No one answers the phone at the Bulgarian shipping company's Hungarian office. The crews have all gone home. All that remains are four tugs and some barges, stranded and unable to return to their Danube River home port.
The Hungarian shipping company Magyar Hajozasi Rt. has the same problem in reverse.
"We have four tug boats and 24 barges idle in Bulgaria," said Laszlo Koszonits, who heads the company's Danube shipping department. "They have been there six months now."
Until this spring – when NATO launched its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia – the 1,750-mile Danube, which stretches from Germany through Austria and the Balkans to the Black Sea, served as the cheapest way to transport many bulk goods from eastern to western Europe.
But since NATO knocked out the first bridge spanning the river in the northern Yugoslav city of Novi Sad, leaving huge chunks of metal in the waterway, the Danube has been rendered virtually impassable. Recently built pontoon bridges also prevent any boats from using the passage.
The western alliance's 78-day air campaign against Yugoslavia, aimed at stopping a Yugoslav crackdown in Kosovo province, also took out two other bridges at Novi Sad. Now, three months after the end of the war, the river remains clogged with concrete and other debris from the damaged bridges, virtually dividing the river in two.
And the impasse is likely to stay that way for a while. Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia, is asking that the "aggressor" countries, NATO members and their allies, pay for the destroyed bridges before the river can be cleared to reopen traffic.
There is a way around the clogged part of the river – the Kaiser's Canal, built by the Austro-Hungarian emperor before the outbreak of World War I. But Serbia has placed the waterway off limits to NATO member Hungary, as well as Bulgaria and Romania, which allowed NATO planes to use their airspace during the war.
"We have asked Belgrade officially to be allowed to use the bypass canal at Novi Sad, but were turned down, albeit politely," said Koszonits. "The reason cited was that it was for the use of domestic river traffic only, that only Yugoslav boats could use it."
Still, ships from Russia and Ukraine, which opposed the airstrikes, are allowed to use the channel.
A leading opposition politician in Serbia's northern province of Vojvodina, whose capital is Novi Sad, accused the Yugoslav government of using the channel to smuggle oil and other goods, while refusing to clear the river.
"The point of the blockade is to blackmail the international community, particularly the Danube countries" to pay for the reconstruction of the bridges, Nenad Canak told The Associated Press.
The blockage along the Danube has brought the fleets of Bulgaria and Romania to a virtual standstill. Already suffering from weak economies, the countries can ill afford such losses in their shipping industries.
Four Bulgarian tugboats with 25 barges have been anchored in Hungary since March because of the stalemate, according to Bulgarian Transport Ministry officials. Bulgaria claims some $100 million in trade losses from the war in Kosovo, which severed its main trade routes to Europe, including the Danube.
Nearly 40 Romanian barges have been stranded upriver from Yugoslavia since the start of the war and the country estimates it has lost some $90 million in trade since the start of the war. In addition 3,500 people employed by the Danube shipping companies have lost their jobs, according to the Romanian Transportation Ministry.
Despite being allowed use of the Kaiser's Canal, Ukraine claims losses of $70 million in trade, caused by the suspension of river traffic.
Last week, the transportation ministers of Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine jointly appealed to the European Union for financial aid to clear the Danube of the debris in order to resume shipping.
In addition, Danail Nedialkov of the Budapest-based International Danube Commission said a meeting of the Danube countries is to be held at the end of the month in Rotterdam.
"I hope the clearing of the Danube can start very soon," he said. "This is in the interest of not only Yugoslavia, but of Europe."