Croatian Village Split by Battle Line Is a Microcosm of Ethnic Upheavals : Yugoslavia: Referendum on republic’s independence could fuel further strife.

The battle line in Yugoslavia’s on-again, off-again civil war runs straight through this village in eastern Croatia, where ethnic Serbs who have been a minority for centuries have recently come to resent their role.

Croatian flags with checkerboard shields whip from public buildings along the main street, and political posters of the Croatian Democratic Union--the ruling party in post-Communist Croatia--implore Sotin residents to seek independence from the Yugoslav union that binds them to Serbia.

Violence bred by nationalism has already killed at least 19 people in ethnically mixed regions of Croatia, including a young Serbian militant gunned down in Sotin two weeks ago by armed Croatian civilians who say they thought he shot first.

Tensions have been running high since the shooting, and a referendum Sunday on Croatian independence provided fresh ground on which the two sides could clash.

Ethnic Serbs, who account for about one-third of Sotin’s 2,000 residents and at least 11% of Croatia’s 5 million population, boycotted Sunday’s balloting, which asked voters to decide between a free Croatian state or continued federal rule by Belgrade.

The Croatian referendum commission announced early today that with 70% of the vote counted, more than 94% of Croats supported sovereignty.

Serbs say they fear persecution in an independent Croatia, pointing to the barbaric treatment of minorities during the World War II-era Ustasha regime that was Croatia’s only previous period of independence. Croats say the fears are groundless, but the flag-waving makes Serbs nervous and has divided mixed communities throughout the republic.

It wasn’t always “us against them” in Sotin, says Mayor Ante Ljubas.

“We ate and drank with these people for years. But now they don’t respect Croatia,” complains Ljubas. “They want a Greater Serbia in the name of Yugoslavia to extend all the way to Zagreb”--capital of Croatia.

Serbs were conspicuously absent from the drizzly streets of Sotin on Sunday, but it was a different story in towns where they form a majority.

Rebels opposed to Croatian independence prevented polling stations from being set up in Borovo Selo, a predominantly Serbian village a few miles away, where 12 Croatian policemen and three Serbs were killed in gun battles earlier this month.

Federal soldiers and tanks blocked the sole road into Borovo Selo on Sunday to prevent further bloodshed or any challenge by Croats angered by the thwarting of their referendum.

Despite the Serbian boycott, there was never much doubt about the outcome of Sunday’s balloting.

Croats had already expressed their overwhelming desire to leave the Yugoslav federation, and last week’s Serbian-led destruction of the federal leadership iced the decision for any that were still weighing the benefits of saving Yugoslavia.

Croatia’s delegate to the eight-man presidency, Stipe Mesic, was blocked by Serbia from taking his turn as head of state and commander of the armed forces under a rotating system designed to prevent the kind of nationalist power plays now ruining the country.

With the federation leaderless and hurtling toward disintegration, Croatian voters had been expected to overwhelmingly choose independence.

Their nationalist leaders made no secret of which way they wanted citizens to vote. Each was given two ballots--a peaceful blue one to mark “for” or “against” an independent Croatia, and a Communist red one with the choices of “for” or “against” a united Yugoslavia.

For those who might have been confused, there was within sight of every polling place a poster showing the sentiments of the Croatian Democratic Union headed by President Franjo Tudjman: a circle around “for” on the blue ballot and “against” on the red.

“There have been no problems with the voting, but not too many Serbs are turning out,” said Pero Odor, a village elder overseeing the balloting and one of the few Serbs encountered in public in Sotin. “Maybe 5% or 10% will come here to vote.”

Serbian communities are sprinkled across Croatia and neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina, along what was once the southern frontier of Hapsburg Austria. Serbs who fled Ottoman Turkey’s 500-year occupation of their homeland were given land in return for defending the former European empire against Turkish incursions.

Formation of Yugoslavia in 1918 allowed a political reunion of Serbia with the Serbs in Croatia.

Croatia’s leadership plans to use the referendum outcome as a mandate to proceed with secession, and it has already called for a special parliamentary session later this week to lay the groundwork for the republic’s pullout.

Those moves could trigger more bloodshed between armed Serbs and Croats, although most people here seemed relatively passive on Sunday and far from eager to fight an outright war.

According to local accounts of the recent Sotin shootout, the clash was a classic example of tight nerves and itchy trigger fingers.

Army troops were deployed a week ago to break up both sides’ roadblocks and strip illegally armed militants of their weapons. The barricades have been cleared, but soldiers have hesitated to disarm either Serbs or Croats for fear of violent resistance.

“If the army comes and President Tudjman calls on the people to hand in their weapons, then I will do so,” said a young Croat who took his hunting rifle to help man the barricades in Sotin before the army stepped in.

“But it has to be everyone, not just one side. There are 50 hunters in this village--30 Croats and 20 Serbs--and everyone knows that Serbs have received weapons from the army.”

Croatian officials, including Mayor Ljubas, contend that the Serbian-commanded federal army is taking sides against Croatia and that a military cordon extending from the border with Hungary to the Adriatic Sea is actually the boundary of an expanded Serbian state to be declared by Belgrade should Croatia secede.