Flicker of Hope Seen in Yugoslavia’s Turbulence : Ethnic conflict: A jittery quiet prevails. Many fear that it could be the calm before the storm.

Staring into the face of a civil war, Yugoslavs took a collective deep breath Sunday while searching for an escape from the dangerous corner into which their nationalist leaders have pushed them.

Dire predictions of a military coup or ethnic cataclysm have so far gone unfulfilled. That has offered a flicker of hope that the bellicose national groups have momentarily stepped back from the precipice of a conflagration, although Sunday’s quiet seemed more a paralysis induced by fear.

Police patrolled the streets of Belgrade in unusually heavy force. The traditional Sunday promenade through the cobblestone shopping streets was pared to a wary few.

Serbian paramilitary troops stood watch in ethnically mixed regions of Croatia, and maneuvers by armored vehicles were reported at bases near Belgrade.

No violent clashes were known to have broken out, but many worried that the silence was but an ominous pause.

In a high-stakes gamble he hopes will preserve his political power, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic called Yugoslavia’s largest republic to arms over the weekend and said Serbia will no longer recognize the authority of the federal leadership.

Serbia has armed itself against a perceived threat from Croatia, which earlier placed its police forces on alert in response to signals from the federal army that it might impose a state of emergency.

Political leaders in four of Yugoslavia’s six republics have closed ranks and characterized the Milosevic moves as those of an isolated and desperate man. The republic leaders are pressing for sober negotiations to prevent the armed standoff from exploding into uncontrollable violence.

Yugoslavia is currently without a president after the resignation Friday of Borisav Jovic, a Serbian Communist and Milosevic ally who headed the eight-man ruling body that commands the armed forces.

Fears of a military coup to fill the power vacuum have gripped Yugoslavia since Friday, when army hard-liners were denied approval for emergency measures.

But the army had not moved into the fray more than two days after hints it would take unilateral steps to preserve Yugoslav unity or to prop up Milosevic, who is confronted with growing opposition to his authoritarian rule. That suggests the Communist-dominated army may not be as supportive of Milosevic as earlier presumed.

The federal newspaper Borba last week told of a split in the military hierarchy, with Defense Minister Veljko Kadijevic supposedly struggling to maintain the federal integrity of Yugoslavia while Chief of Staff Blagoje Adzic was reportedly seeking martial law to impose hard-line Communist rule throughout the federation.

Kadijevic has been noticeably absent from emergency government meetings held over the last few days, leading to speculation that the authoritarian forces within the army have the upper hand and may move to protect Milosevic.

The 49-year-old Serbian president’s old-style brand of communism was endorsed in multi-party elections last year, while most other Yugoslav republics elected non-Communist leaders. That shrinking of the ideological sanctuary has made Serbia the last refuge for the army’s predominantly Serbian and Communist high command.

What remains to be seen is whether the pro-Yugoslav military faction behind Kadijevic will decide the army’s next move or whether Adzic would triumph and seek to keep Milosevic in power by imposing military rule and disarming Croatia.

Yugoslav media on Sunday issued contradictory reports on the status of Adzic, some claiming he had resigned and others confirming he remained in office.

The confusion likely reflects a continuing power struggle within the army, or the high command’s uncertainty over how to proceed in the escalating federal crisis.

While the lack of intervention held out some hope that a violent clash between Serbs and Croats could be averted, both republics stood with swords drawn in an atmosphere of intense fear, mutual suspicion and ethnic hatred that has been begging for decades to be indulged.

Milosevic has stirred up nationalist passions among Serbs through unrelenting propaganda issued by mass media that until last week were tightly controlled by his fellow Communists, who now call themselves the Socialist Party of Serbia.

Some Serbs interviewed Sunday condemned Communist manipulation of the press, suggesting that support for Milosevic might be starting to slip.

But the Serbian strongman won 65% of his republic’s vote for president only three months ago, and there is widespread evidence that the propaganda offensive against other national groups has succeeded in mobilizing the Serbian people and psychologically preparing them for civil war.

“I would be prepared to take up arms to protect Serbs in Croatia. I have no doubts that they are truly threatened,” said Boris Djuric, an 18-year-old student due to enter the army in September.

A seemingly immovable cornerstone of the Milosevic power base is his ability to unify Serbs to defend against dangers he insists are imposed by other Yugoslav ethnic groups. His propaganda machine convinced Serbs that the ethnic Albanian majority in the province of Kosovo was plotting to secede and join Stalinist Albania, thereby justifying a crackdown that began in early 1989.

To back his full-scale military alert issued to Serbian troops Saturday, Milosevic claimed there had been unrest in Kosovo and in a Muslim region that extends from neighboring Bosnia-Hercegovina into southern Serbia.

Virtually the entire Serbian population applauds Milosevic’s subjugation of the Kosovo Albanians, and many are appealing for similar action against Croatia in light of the alleged threat against the 600,000 Serbs who live there.

Serb-Croat power struggles over police stations have already spurred violent clashes in several ethnically mixed Croatian towns. But special forces dispatched by Zagreb have so far managed to quell the disturbances without injuring or killing Serbs.

Croatian and ethnic Albanian leaders in Kosovo vowed Sunday that they would not be lured into fighting with the Serbian reservists patrolling their territory.

BACKGROUND

Yugoslavia’s crisis has been mounting since the death in 1980 of Josip Broz Tito, who ruled with an iron hand for 35 years. Divisions among the six republics have increased since four of them abandoned Communist rule in free elections last year. The two biggest republics--Serbia and Croatia--are old rivals with different religions, cultures and, now, different political systems, with Serbia clinging to hard-line Communist rule. Croatia says Serbia wants to control all of Yugoslavia; the Serbs say they are threatened by an “anti-Serbian coalition” bent on ending Communist rule.