"The embargo against Yugoslavia has hit us very hard," said Nicolae Deneanu, general manager of Craiova's Avioane SA.
"What you see here is worth around $30 million. But who can tell if they will ever fly?" Deneanu said in the silent warehouse, lined with some 60 jet fighter fuselages unlikely ever to be mated with the piles of wings stacked elsewhere.
Two years ago the Craiova plant, 230 kilometers west of Bucharest, bustled with work. But the civil war in the former Yugoslavia exploded, bringing with it the trade embargo. Romania says the embargo has cost it more than $7 billion in lost trade.
The Craiova plant was built in the 1970s with an initial investment of $100 million, part of a joint Romanian-Yugoslav project to build IAR 93-Orao fighter-bombers for the air forces of the two neighboring Balkan states.
Under an agreement signed by the late communist presidents -- Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu and Yugoslavia's Iosip Broz Tito -- the Craiova plant was expected to produce 200 IAR 93s, as well as parts, fuselages and wings for a similar number of jets to be assembled in Yugoslavia.
"It was the typical, foolish, communist arrangement: we depended on them and they depended on us. Besides, what army in the world needs 200 subsonic aircraft?" Deneanu said.
In 1992, the plant stopped producing the IAR 93s and laid off 2,000 highly trained workers and experts, he said. Now it is trying to diversify, making luggage rolleys and kit buildings.
"When we closed shop in 1992 we had already produced 80 planes. The Yugoslavs had about the same number," he added.
The embargo also hit Romania's Turbomecanica SA, which manufactured the engine for the IAR 93 -- the Viper 647, under licence from Britain's Rolls Royce PLC -- as well as the Aerostar SA aircraft plant in the city of Bacau, which produced landing gear for the Romanian-Yugoslav jet.
"The problem is that the Yugoslav part of the project was financed by the former federal army, and the aircraft plants are in Croatia. We don't know if they are still interested in working with us after the crisis there is over," Deneanu said.
Gruia Stoienica, Deneanu's deputy, said many of those who had lost their jobs at the plant had had to resort to "selling potatoes in the market place or driving taxis."
A skeleton staff has been kept on to work on another aircraft project, the IAR 99 two-seat trainer, on which Deneanu is pinning his hopes of once again becoming a manufacturer of glamorous jets rather than luggage trolleys.
"The IAR 99 is the cheapest on the market, built with Western technology and very versatile. It's the perfect tool for training. We are confident it can sell well," he said.
Deneanu said a "foreign army" was looking at buying 40 of the trainers. "For the time being, I prefer to keep all details of the deal confidential. But if signed, the contract will keep our order books full for the next four years."
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