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BUDAPEST, Hungary -- Hungarian scientists and government officials warned Saturday that ice moving down the Danube in the coming months may pile up and form a dam behind the bridges bombed by NATO in Yugoslavia and cause extensive flooding.
Hungary has asked Yugoslavia for permission to send floating cranes down river to lift the debris and open passages before winter sets in. Governments from the 11 Danube countries also want the river cleared because the obstructions are costing them huge amounts of money in lost shipping revenues.
The Serbian answer so far has been no, according to officials at the Hungarian Ministry of Transport.
The Belgrade government has said it does not have the money to clear the debris, and it cannot get help from Western countries that have imposed an embargo on economic aid to Yugoslavia, including on funds for the Danube cleanup.
"The Serbs said first they will do no cleaning unless they get help to rebuild," said Zoltan Illes, chairman of the Hungarian Parliament's environment committee. "Now they say they will not cooperate with the ice issue. This is certainly a kind of blackmail."
Western diplomats here said that American and European government officials have taken up the issue.
They said that the need to clear the river may lead at least some European countries to break the economic embargo against Yugoslavia.
"This has the makings of a crisis, of a public relations crisis and a genuine disaster, which could be laid at our doorstep," a diplomat of a NATO country said.
Heads of government of Central European countries meeting in Budapest on Wednesday called for urgent measures to clear the river.
The three bridges that cause greatest concern are in Novi Sad. Their twisted iron frames and huge fallen concrete blocks have choked off trade on the 1,800-mile river, which crosses from southern Germany through the Balkans to the Black Sea.
"There have been pressures from all sides to reopen the river," said Miroslav Spasojevic, an official of the Yugoslav Ministry for Development and Environment who attended the conference. "But we will not just open passage without getting help to rebuild the bridges."
While lost revenues had been the main complaint, Hungary also says the threat that ice will form "corks" and cause floods has given new urgency to the need to remove the debris.
Although the river rarely freezes over, large sheets form every few years between December and February.
Hungary has bought a fleet of icebreakers that patrol its own stretch of the Danube and portions in Croatia and Serbia.
Gyorgy Droppa, a river engineer and chairman of the environmental group Danube Circle, said that if the Danube waters back up at Novi Sad, the areas most at risk are the low-lying portions of Serbia and Croatia and parts of Hungary.
But even if Yugoslavia allows floating cranes into Novi Sad, the equipment could not get to work immediately.
Hungarian officials said that the Belgrade government has told them there are still unexploded missiles and other ordinance in the Danube. "Before any operations can start, the weapons must be located and removed from the water or exploded," said an official at the Hungarian Transport Minister's office.
Although Hungary is a member of NATO, the official said that the government did not have such crucial information about the whereabouts of the munitions and hopes that it will get this from the United States and other NATO countries involved in the bombing at Novi Sad.
Specialists attending the conference on the environment and the Danube said that once the work on the bridges starts, they could be lifted in three weeks.