Armed Serbs Close Roads Into Croatia Before Autonomy Vote

Serbs armed with shotguns and hunting rifles sealed roads into southwestern Croatia on Saturday to prevent the republic’s police from blocking a referendum on autonomy.

But Serbs and Croatian police said tensions between the two sides were easing in the dispute that seemed to have peaked Friday when Yugoslavian air force fighters intercepted a flight of police helicopters to prevent them from reaching this region near the Adriatic coast.

The ethnic Serbian minority in Croatia plans a referendum on autonomy today. The government of Croatia has declared it illegal.

The increasingly bitter disagreements between Yugoslavia’s two largest ethnic groups is threatening to tear the fragile federation apart.

“If the police come and try to break through in their armored cars, we will fry them like chickens in a pan,” said a Serbian man armed with a shotgun while standing guard at a roadblock nine miles north of Knin.

Other armed Serbs felled trees and dumped rocks on the main highway south of the Croatian capital of Zagreb.

Croatian police have not tried to break through the roadblocks and were not seen in the area on Saturday.

The roadblocks sealed off resorts on the Adriatic coast and left carloads of German and Italian tourists stuck facing armed villagers.

Serbs, the largest Yugoslavian ethnic group, make up 11% of Croatia’s 5 million people. Serbs claim that the reform-minded government of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman is fostering nationalist tensions.

Tudjman’s administration, which won an overwhelming victory last spring in Yugoslavia’s first free elections in 50 years, advocates turning the country into a loose federation of six nearly independent states.

Serbia’s hard-line Communist president, Slobodan Milosevic, and the Communist-dominated armed forces oppose this and favor greater centralization and federal control. Serbia is the largest republic in Yugoslavia.