The Serbs weren’t buying it. Last Monday’s surprise seizure of the Trepca smelter was part of a coordinated assault ordered by Kouchner against the main symbols of hard-line Serb resistance to U.N. authority in Kosovo. Hours later dozens of U.N. police shut down a Serb-run radio station with close ties to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in the town of Zvecan, just north of Mitrovica. Funded by an ally of Milosevic in Belgrade, Radio S had refused an order to broadcast U.N.-sponsored announcements urging people to vote in the municipal elections scheduled for October. The double strike sent a signal that Serb defiance would no longer be tolerated. But Kouchner’s moves into the Serb heartland only seemed to further alienate its inhabitants. Four British soldiers and dozens of Serbs were injured in rioting that broke out after the Trepca seizure, and demonstrators rallied against Kouchner and NATO all week in front of the factory. “We will continue our protests, and we won’t give up our struggle for Trepca to remain Serb,” said Oliver Ivanovic, an ex-karate champion and leader of the Serb opposition.

The confrontation between the United Nations and the Serbs had been building for months. Most of Kosovo’s remaining Serbs are concentrated in the enclave of North Mitrovica, separated from the Albanian half of the city by the Ibar River, and in the surrounding countryside. Serbs living in the Mitrovica area continue to use the Yugoslav dinar rather than the German mark, Kosovo’s official currency. They receive salaries and pensions from Belgrade, and recognize Milosevic, not the United Nations, as their lawful ruler. This summer the population’s resistance to U.N. authority has become more demonstrative. Two weeks ago three Serbs on trial for war crimes in the U.N.-administered court in Mitrovica said they were sick and were taken to the Serb-controlled Mitrovica hospital. There they got a hero’s welcome–and escaped from their hospital beds in the middle of the night.

After the United Nations announced that municipal elections would be held on Oct. 28, Serbs led by Ivanovic organized a boycott of the voter-registration drive. In Leposavic, north of Mitrovica, where a renegade Serb deputy mayor had begun encouraging locals to vote, thugs demanded to see registration rolls and stood watch in a cafe outside the U.N. registration center. Last week someone firebombed the home of a moderate Serb Orthodox priest in Gracanica, near Pristina. The combination of threats and propaganda has been effective. Of the 50,000 Serbs living in the Mitrovica area, only 470 are registered to vote in October.

In recent months the Trepca complex had become another symbol of Serb defiance. After medical tests on NATO troops and local residents revealed dangerous lead levels in their bloodstreams, Kouchner ordered the manager, a Milosevic crony named Novak Bialic, to install filters and make other improvements. Kouchner says Bialic ignored him. In mid-July Bialic rebuffed a U.N. offer to invest millions of dollars in the plant. Kouchner decided to act. NATO troops in tanks and armored personnel carriers occupied Trepca before dawn on Aug. 14 and closed it down; Bialic was stopped at the border when he tried to return from a visit to Serbia. “He’s a troublemaker,” said Kouchner. “He was acting against his workers. People were in danger. This was a crime.” Now the United Nations plans to spend $16 million to rebuild Trepca. It has paid the workers their salaries through the end of August, promising them paychecks while the smelter is under repair.

Yet Kouchner’s reassurances don’t seem to be working. Standing in front of a mob of idled Serb workers at Trepca’s front gate, Oliver Ivanovic insisted that NATO’s occupation was part of a plot to replace them with Albanian workers. “We will not allow the Albanians in,” he declared. A few feet away Tomislav Zhivkovic, an engineer who has worked at Trepca for 28 years, roared his approval. “The people have nothing but this factory,” said Zhivkovic. “They don’t trust the United Nations.” Kouchner controls the ground, but winning the hearts and minds of Kosovo’s Serbs may be beyond his capabilities.