The canal system is a national channel, so ships need Belgrade's permission to travel on it. And along these gentle rivers, Russian and Ukrainian vessels are now moving through Serbia, bypassing Novi Sad and keeping open their maritime passage down through the Iron Gates to the Black Sea. Europe closed the Danube river, so now it can stay closed - except for a chosen few.For by extraordinary chance, the Austro-Hungarian engineers who long ago drained the great lakes of Vojvodina, constructed a canal system around Novi Sad, a waterway whose road and rail bridges Nato never thought to destroy. It would accept no such generosity, the Serbian government said, until Yugoslavia was readmitted to all international organisations, including the IMF There is, of course, a painful beauty in all this. The Serbs promptly told the Austrians they could rebuild all the bridges - or none.Then the International Danube Commission, under EU pressure, offered to rebuild all the bridges And Belgrade turned down the offer. According to the Serbs, German investors in Hungary are losing billions of Deutschmarks because of the river's continued closure. Which may be why an Austrian mission turned up with a proposal to clear the Danube and build a temporary pontoon for cars on the piles of the blasted the Austro-Hungarian bridge.

But that is the way they are going to stay until Europe shows its remorse; because as long as the Danube remains blocked, Serbia has a steel grip on the jugular of Europe. Special friends excepted. Europe bombed the bridges - so now it will have to pay the price And it will be a high one. YOU WOULDN'T think, looking at the great road bridges drooping into the Danube, that they could be so powerful a financial weapon in the hands of Slobodan Milosevic. The tarmac surface and neat white lines and railings finish in the dark, powerful green billows of one of Europe's major waterways, a grim tribute to the American cruise missiles that destroyed them in April. Their impact is greater too: where most murders used to occur behind closed doors today most are carried out on the street.. Under the Soviet Union, says the ministry's Vladimir Zubkov, 90 per cent of murders were for personal reasons Now the commonest motive is commercial rivalry. But other aspects of the case are seen as typical of crime in the former Soviet Union, not least the fact that everybody involved was highly drunk.

The Interior Ministry in Moscow says: "Alcohol abuse is involved in four-fifths of everyday murders."But there has been a change in motives. Matveev, who cut up the body, got a surprisingly light sentence of five years, while the woman who sold the meat in the market was acquitted as it was impossible to prove she knew its origin.The bizarre method of disposal attracted the attention of the Russian media. Movsesyan, now starting a 15-year sentence, had once been employed as a specialist in foreign trade. Falling on hard times, he worked as a street cleaner and a driver, but told friends his ambition was to own a farm and keep animals.Nikitin, who got 18 years for stabbing Petku to death, said his dream was to go to St Petersburg, meet beautiful women and own a car. He had also been earning money by killing stray dogs and cats and selling them as stewed meat. They agreed the same method could be used to get rid of Petku's remains.The body was chopped up in the bathroom, and a woman friend was sent out to sell the meat in cans. Given its low price there were plenty of customers, though nobody in Pskov is admitting buying it.Meantime, however, the goings-on in the apartment attracted the attention of local police.

In the attic they found fragments of flesh which had not yet been cooked. When the remains were identified as human, the men were arrested.Shadowy details of their personalities emerged at the trial. The party was joined by Ivan Petku, a homeless man whom the others suspected of being a police informer. They beat him up and decided to drown him in the nearby Pskova river On the way Petku broke free, but was recaptured. At this point the gang changed their minds, and took him back to the apartment.It was here, says prosecutor Andrei Pravdivtsev, that Movsesyan handed a knife to Nikitin and said: "Finish the skunk." At first Nikitin refused, but when the others threatened to kill him as well he stabbed Petku twice through the heart.The group was at first perplexed about how to dispose of the body But Matveev had once worked in a meat processing plant.