Yugoslav Leaders Call for Peace; Impasse Continues : Nationalism: There are no signs that radicals will heed the appeal. Slide to anarchy continues.

The virtually powerless federal government appealed for peace among war-mongering radicals in Serbia and Croatia on Wednesday, but there were no signs that nationalist leaders would heed the call and halt Yugoslavia’s slide into anarchy and civil war.

After a third night of crisis talks, the eight-member state presidency remained deadlocked over whether to impose martial law.

The Serbian-dominated federal army has deployed tanks and combat-ready troops to ethnically troubled areas. The high command’s absence from the leadership talks in Belgrade heightened fears that the army might stage a coup if the presidency failed to act soon.

Sectarian violence has killed 18 people over the last week, halted rail and road traffic in parts of Croatia and prompted a massive call-up of military reservists to bolster the army’s presence in potential trouble spots.

Federal authorities blame the presidents of Serbia and Croatia, the largest of Yugoslavia’s six republics, for whipping up ethnic hatred to a seemingly uncontrollable level.

A deputy defense minister lashed out at republic leaders and the media for turning the Yugoslav people against the army. One soldier was killed and another was injured Monday when angry Croats rioted in Split, accusing the army of protecting Serbs who have imposed a blockade in the region.

“This can no longer be tolerated,” Adm. Stane Brovet told the federal Parliament in Belgrade. “Ethnic conflicts . . . are growing daily, assuming quite alarming proportions and taking on many aspects of a civil war. The manner in which the army has been used to head off ethnic conflicts has been exhausted,” Brovet warned, suggesting that the army felt pressured to take more decisive action.

Federal troops and tanks have been deployed in Croatia for more than two months, yet nationalist confrontations have continued to spread.

Army Chief of Staff Blagoje Adzic, a hard-line Serbian Communist, said the military will move to quell unrest if the federal presidency fails to do so.

The army unilaterally declared the higher alert Tuesday.

Since the army is under the command of the presidency, Adzic’s warning and the mobilizations indicate a growing readiness on the army’s part to supersede what is left of federal authority.

Serbia and Croatia have been ignoring edicts of the federal government for months, a situation that has destroyed the Yugoslav economy and undermined the credibility of federal Prime Minister Ante Markovic.

Markovic issued an 11-point peace plan Wednesday, calling for disarming of militia and police units so that the army could perform its constitutional duty as defender of Yugoslav borders and move to prevent inter-ethnic clashes.

Because Yugoslavia faces no threat from outside the country, some observers interpreted the government proposal as tantamount to support for martial law. But Markovic has steadfastly campaigned against use of the army to prevent the republics of Slovenia and Croatia from seceding and formally dissolving the already crumbling Yugoslav federation formed in 1918.

As they move toward independence, Slovenia and Croatia have cut funds to the federal budget, about two-thirds of which goes to support the 180,000-strong army. To preserve the federal structure that provides its livelihood, the army has pressed the collective presidency for power to prevent secessions.

But Slovenia and Croatia warn that they will take up arms, if necessary, to prevent a military takeover of their republics.

“Croatia sees a state of emergency as occupation and war,” said Mario Nobilo, spokesman for Croatian President Franjo Tudjman.

Some of the 600,000 ethnic Serbs living in Croatia, a republic of nearly 5 million, have staged armed uprisings and declared independence from the republic in protest of the secession movement that would break ties with Serbia.

Tudjman cut short a trip to Britain to return to his strife-torn republic, but he failed to join the presidents of the other five Yugoslav republics at the crisis talks in Belgrade.

Serbian Prime Minister Dragutin Zelenovic called for a state of emergency to be declared in Croatia and accused the rival republic of “serious criminal acts of violence and maltreatment and even liquidating of Serbs.”

Zelenovic pressed for a new federal police force to patrol ethnic trouble spots--a proposal equally likely to meet with opposition from Croatia amid repeated demands that soldiers disarm the republic’s police force.

Milan Paroski, a radical member of Serbia’s republic Parliament, called for the arrest of Stipe Mesic, Croatia’s presidential representative who will assume chairmanship of the presidency next week.

There were fewer outbreaks of violence reported Wednesday, but roadblocks and ethnically motivated sabotage have cut off supplies and services to broad regions of Croatia and parts of the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which has a mixed population of Serbs, Croats and Muslims.

Explosions have cut transport and communications, and angry villages have bottled up several military convoys on mountain roads leading toward Croatia from the city of Mostar, in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Traffic was also paralyzed on roads linking Sarajevo to Croatia’s Dalmatian coast.

Special correspondent Michael Montgomery in Belgrade contributed to this story.