What's an old mine worth in Kosovo?

Wheels turn and cables whir as an elevator hauls miners up from the cold, wet depths of the Stari Trg mine. The elevator clanks to a halt just below the surface and the men emerge, their headlamps burning and water streaming from their heavy canvas jackets.

A lead and zinc mine, Stari Trg was once one of the richest in Europe and the centerpiece of the Trepca industrial complex. Yet years of neglect, underinvestment, and political upheaval have left Trepca a decaying monument to a once glorious past.

Today, workers descend almost to the bottom, 2,640 feet below, in an effort to free a jammed elevator.

"I think we can do it," says Aziz Neziri, a rugged, square-jawed man with a thick black mustache.

Confidence comes easily to the Stari Trg miners, who have recently returned to work for the first time since Serbian authorities fired them almost 10 years ago. But a stuck elevator is only one of their problems. Much of the mine's equipment is broken or outdated. Millions of gallons of water have flooded its lower extremities. And the mine's fate is caught up in political and economic uncertainties from which not even the toughest miners can free it.

Trepca's future is one of the most difficult and emotional questions facing Kosovo. In addition to Stari Trg, Trepca includes several lesser mines, processing plants, and dozens of factories that turn Kosovo's mineral wealth into products ranging from batteries to paint. In the former Yugoslavia, Trepca employed thousands of workers and was the pride of Kosovo.

Little of this vast enterprise is operating today. But to many people, it remains Kosovo's most valuable economic asset. For ethnic Albanians especially, in charge in Kosovo after long years of struggle, Trepca stands as a glittering symbol of hope.

"Trepca was the most important industrial engine of Kosovo," says Muhamet Mustafa, president of an economic research institute in Pristina, Kosovo's capital. "I think it will have real importance."

Legacies of the war

Most of the complex lies in northern Kosovo around the city of Mitrovica. Last October, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia investigated rumors that Serbs had hidden the bodies of hundreds of ethnic Albanians in the mines. But nothing was found. A once-mixed community, Mitrovica is now bitterly divided between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.

Both sides covet Trepca, but neither controls all of it. The Stari Trg mine lies in an ethnic Albanian area, while the lead smelter that once refined much of its ore is Serbian. Both sides have managers that claim to be the true masters of Trepca.

The question of who owns Trepca is also disputed. The Serbian management says the enterprise, once state-owned, was sold in the 1990s. At least two foreign companies claim an interest in Trepca based on deals made with the Serbian government during that same period. Ethnic Albanians repudiate these transactions and insist that Trepca belongs to its workers.

Trepca's real value

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