Serbs Again Block Croatian as President : Yugoslavia: Maneuvering puts off a vote at least until today. The nation draws closer to disintegration.

This nation lurched toward its destruction Thursday, with Serbia scoring another political victory over rival Croatia by again delaying inauguration of Croatian Stipe Mesic as president.

Each day that Yugoslavia staggers along without a head of state or supreme military commander pushes the doomed federation closer to collapse and ethnic conflagration.

Serbian and Croatian nationalists have been poised for civil war for weeks, and at least 19 have been killed in ethnic violence in Croatia this month.

Mesic was to have been voted in as the first non-Communist president of Yugoslavia on Wednesday, as prescribed by an intricate leadership formula set out in the Yugoslav constitution. But a Serbian-engineered blockade prevented his ascension, leaving the federation without a leader.

On Thursday, Serbia orchestrated complex political maneuvering in the federal Parliament that served to put off a second vote for a new president at least until today. Croatia indicated that its patience is wearing thin.

“If Mesic is not approved, Croatia will take this as a signal that she is free to start the process of dissociation,” warned Darko Bekic, chief political adviser to Croatian President Franjo Tudjman.

Croatia has threatened to join neighboring Slovenia in its plan to secede from Yugoslavia next month unless Serbia ceases stirring up ethnic hostility in mixed regions of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

While the leaders of Croatia and three other republics expressed their hope that Mesic would eventually be allowed to take office, they were dismayed by the stalling maneuvers employed by Serbia and the only other Communist-ruled republic, tiny Montenegro.

Wednesday’s presidential vote among the six republics and two Serbian-controlled provinces was 4-3 in favor of Mesic, with the three Serbian delegates voting against him and Montenegro abstaining.

Montenegro could change its vote in future balloting, giving Mesic the five-vote majority he needs to take over. But the republic predominantly populated by Serbs has always moved in lock- step with Serbia, and its scheduling of a parliamentary debate to consider a new position today smacked of deliberate delay in the volatile situation.

“We see this as a further complication of the process,” complained Bekic. “Serbia is clearly trying, once again, to provoke the army to take everything into its own hands.”

Armed Serbs and Croatian police are locked in a tense standoff in ethnically mixed regions of Croatia, with federal troops deployed between them, ostensibly to keep the peace.

The army was sent into the troubled region of Croatia known as Krajina to prevent further bloodshed as Croatian police seek to disarm Serbs who have banded together into illegal, self-styled militia units to take control of Serbian-dominated villages from the republic.

But the army has done little but stand a nervous watch over the face-off since being deployed in Krajina a week ago, raising complaints by Croatian authorities in Zagreb that the Serbian-commanded force is actually protecting the illegal units.

The Croatian Interior Ministry has challenged the army to fulfill its orders to disarm the illegal units, the Tanjug news agency reported Thursday. Such a move would likely set off sectarian clashes throughout the Croatian regions where Serbs are a majority of the population.

On the other hand, if Croatia tries to disarm the Serbs without military backing, they could unleash a bloodbath or provoke an army takeover.

About 600,000 of Croatia’s 5 million people are Serbs, and about one-third of them live in the Krajina region.

Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic has whipped up an ardent campaign in his republic for union of all Serbs in a single nation. Croatia fears that the army has been sent to seal off Serbian-populated regions in preparation for their seizure by Serbia once the disintegration of Yugoslavia becomes a certainty.

The federation was created in 1918 from fractious states that had been under the influence of the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires for centuries. The ethnic groups battled among themselves regularly until Communist partisan Josip Broz Tito imposed a forced order after World War II and until his death in 1980.