UK firms accused of ignoring Serbian ban

ROBIN COOK, Labour's frontbench spokesman on trade and industry, has accused the Government of allowing trade to continue with Serbia despite the United Nations embargo.

He yesterday published Customs and Excise figures showing that trade with the whole of Yugoslavia totalled pounds 9.7m in June, compared with pounds 13.3m in June 1991. The UN ban was put in place on 31 May.

Mr Cook pointed to the relatively small drop in trade figures since then to suggest that Britain was at least partially ignoring the embargo. 'The trade embargo on Serbia . . . appears to have been widely circumvented,' Mr Cook said. 'British servicemen who may shortly be sent to Yugoslavia must find it extraordinary that British business still deals with Serbia.'

Both the Department of Trade and Industry and Customs and Excise denied the UK was side- stepping the UN prohibition order. A spokesman for the DTI said: 'The UK is fully enforcing UN sanctions on Serbia and Montenegro.'

Customs and Excise said: 'As far as we can tell there has been no significant sanctions-busting, and we have come across none in the crucial realm of trading military arms.'

A Customs spokesman said the June figures were only 25 per cent lower than last year because most of Britain's trade with the former Yugoslav republics was with Bosnia and in recent years there had been little trade with Serbia.