Unskillfully performed Overhaul or Skillfully Prepared Shipwreck?

Local boatmen on the Adriatic keep sailing far away from Yugoslav warships. "The further away, the better", they explain. They have to be cautious, they say, for they cannot know whether the ship they encounter has been overhauled by Vladimir Skropnik works in Sibenik, whether a ship gun will fire spontaneously, or some other threat is looming large.

Boatmen have been still more cautious after a recent accident in the port of Budva (Montenegro). There as the general public has been informed, the yacht Primorska has been salvaged from sinking minutes after its party disembarked. The party on board the yacht were: Federal Prime Minister Milan Panic, Chief of general Staff of the Yugoslav Army General Zivota Panic, and the hosts, Montenegrin President Momir Bulatovic and prime minister Milo Djukanovic. Luckily, nothing happened to them, not even an undesired bath, but the incident did upset the public.

The docked yacht had begun to sink suddenly, when water rushed into the stern. A navy announcement later said that the steering mechanism had developed trouble that formed an opening for water to break in. navy investigators attributed the damage to the unskilled overhaul by the Sibenik (Croatia) works of a year earlier. They did not rule out the possibility that the overhaul was performed as an act of sabotage. They asserted that routine checks were unable to detect any such trouble.

The navy announcement was even more shocking than the accident knowing that the yacht would have sunk, had the accident occurred on the high seas, or had the five fire engines not managed to reach the port in no time and pump the water out. From our sources we learn that automatic pumping installations on the yacht were out of order, and there were no lifeboats. Can these two facts be blamed also on the Sibenik overhaul works?

Be that as it may, the accident coincided unhappily with a proposed vote of confidence in Prime Minister Milan Panic, while local people , who have to sail in their boats near Navy vessels, became still more concerned about their safety.

On the other hand, the local people have become accustomed to rather unconvincing announcements issued by the Navy. A few months ago, the Navy said several crew were hurt when a gun went off of itself on a ship off Tivat (Montenegro). In another accident, "a spontaneously fired shell" hit a Tivat suburb, as was explained. There have been too many accidents for local people to be able to feel safe and secure, or to accept Navy announcement unreservedly. hence suspicion mounts as to the possible clandestine activities, but, at all events, the Primorska case in other warning to local people as well as to PM Panic and particularly to those who ascribe the causes of accidents without tragic outcome either to chance or to the guilt of those who cannot be reached. This warning seems to be well justified because some of the future accidents may really have tragic outcome. It will be remembered that bombs have been "accidentally self-released" from an aircraft flying outside the town of Kraljevo (central Serbia). And aircraft continue flying over towns. In Podgorica (capital of Montenegro) these days, townspeople feared that law-flying warplanes might crash into tall buildings. In Danilovgrad (Montenegro), a warplane hit the cables of a long-distance power line, but the general public was not told anything, not even that the crew lost their lives. What remains is the fear of ships, guns, bombs and aircraft, of those things that otherwise warrant peace and security.