Army Presses Slovenia Attack : Yugoslavia: The besieged breakaway republic accepts a federal cease-fire offer. But the renegade army’s commander refuses to halt the offensive.

The Yugoslav People’s Army declared Tuesday that it is at war with Slovenia after deadly clashes erupted throughout the breakaway republic, inflicting casualties on surrounded and demoralized federal troops.

Fierce fighting along Slovenia’s border with Croatia cast the republic into a state of siege. Federal soldiers in armored columns exchanged fire with Slovenian territorial defense forces, with the army suffering at least 10 deaths and 13 injuries. Slovenian Radio said there were “many victims.”

Slovenian officials say that at least 100 people have died since the outbreak of fighting and that most of those have been federal troops. More than 2,000 soldiers have surrendered or have been captured by the Slovenes.

Slovenian Prime Minister Lojze Peterle said his republic would unilaterally observe a cease-fire proposed by the Yugoslav presidency. But the army high command refused to cease its offensive, claiming that “a truce is no longer possible.”

In a break with constitutional order that seemed to amount to a military coup, the army chief of staff, Gen. Blagoje Adzic, vowed in a televised address that his Serbian-dominated army would “stop this arrogant behavior” of the rebellious Slovenes.

It was the strongest signal yet in the escalating conflict gripping the disintegrating Yugoslav federation that the army, which is commanded by hard-line Communist Serbs, is ready to launch a full-scale civil war to prevent the country’s breakup.

“We have to accept war because the alternatives, surrender or treason, do not exist for us,” the general closely allied with Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic announced in an uncompromising statement. “Since every war demands sacrifices, they are unavoidable also in this. We will endeavor that the war upon which we are forced will last the shortest possible time.”

The struggling federal presidency that was patched together early Monday with the election of Croatia’s Stipe Mesic as head of state offered a new cease-fire plan that Slovenia accepted.

But like two failed efforts by the European Community to broker piece in the fractious Balkans, there was no sign from the renegade army that it would heed the call to withdraw and negotiate.

Federal air force jets screamed over Ljubljana at lunchtime, firing at the hilltop Ljubljana Castle, the capital’s chief landmark but missing the broadcast transmitters that appeared to be their target.

Slovenes flooded out of shops and offices, running for cover at churches and air raid shelters as sirens wailed and the approaching bombers shattered the sound barrier.

Despite the bedlam, damage in the capital was limited to broken windows. Radio and television broadcasts were momentarily disrupted but restored shortly after the attack.

Army units have been acting out of the control of the federal government since launching a ground assault and aerial blitz on Slovenia on Thursday, two days after Slovenia and neighboring Croatia declared their independence from the Yugoslav federation.

Slovenian President Milan Kucan told reporters that he is prepared to accept a halt to hostilities as soon as the army adhered. But he expressed doubt that the generals in Belgrade could be brought under the control of any governing force.

“You heard Adzic and you saw what the army was doing in Slovenia today,” Kucan said when asked if the military could be expected to comply with the proposed cease-fire.

He said the army’s brutal assault on Slovenia amounted to “the destruction of civilian targets and our way of life.”

Slovenian authorities shut down a nuclear plant at Krsko after army aircraft strafed territorial forces near the facility, raising fears that they would attack the plant itself.

Yugoslav warplanes bombed independence forces after Slovenes fired on tank crews trying to escape a blockade in the wooded valleys around Novo Mesto.

Near the village of Otocac, a battle between Slovenes and a trapped tank unit left seven federal soldiers dead and 13 wounded.

Jets screamed overhead during the fighting and fired at the Slovenian blockade, sending aloft black smoke from burning trucks. Shooting had broken out before dawn when the trapped tanks had tried to break free of the encircling Slovenes.

Dozens of tanks--some of which had been deployed from Croatia bases in violation of the earlier cease-fire--were halted just inside the Slovenian border when resistance fighters mined the roads, trapping the tanks and firing on them in an apparent attempt to get the crews to desert.

Slovenian Defense Minister Janez Jansa had earlier insisted that all army units on Slovenian territory leave their equipment behind when they returned to their barracks.

Ljubljana officials, proposing new terms for resolving the conflict, offered Tuesday to let the army take its tanks and other armor with it, but only on flat-bed trucks, to ensure that they could not be used during the retreat.

Gen. Adzic, the federal chief of staff, informed republic leaders that due to the damage already inflicted on his army, no compromise could be achieved.

There also were hostilities in Croatia, where the Zagreb airport was closed and tanks rolled out of their bases, crushing cars in their path. Some suffered grenade and firebomb attacks before reaching the Slovenian border. At least three soldiers were killed in attacks near the Zagreb garrison, according to Croatian authorities.

Austrian police in the southern border province of Styria said Yugoslav units were firing on Slovenian reservists at the frontier.

“There has been shooting since the afternoon along the whole border,” a police spokesman said.

Ground fighting with air cover by Yugoslav MIGs was reported at a Slovenian-held border crossing in late afternoon, and Austrian police reported heavy machine-gun fire.

Austria has deployed tanks and about 7,000 troops to prevent the Yugoslav battle from spilling over into its territory.

There was also fighting between Slovenes and the army along the border with Italy, according to the Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency.

Mesic, the new Yugoslav president, made clear during a visit to Ljubljana to seek a truce that the army was acting on its own.

Federal Defense Minister Veljko Kadijevic reportedly agreed to the new cease-fire plan proposed by a top official from the republic of Macedonia. But Kadijevic--Yugoslavia’s only four-star general--was said by Adzic to be preparing a public statement, raising speculation that the minister would resign.

A declaration of war, such as that issued by Adzic, would ordinarily be made by president or the defense minister.

Like the European Community accords shattered by the continuing fighting, the plan offered by Macedonia’s presidential delegate, Vasil Tupurkovski, proposed that Slovenia and Croatia observe a three-month moratorium on further moves toward sovereignty, that all federal forces withdraw and that both sides exchange prisoners.

The plan seemed destined to fail in view of the intensifying clashes, as well as the desertions that have embarrassed the army brass.

Both the statement by Adzic and the high command directive a day earlier said humiliating losses during last week’s attack were the fault of army officers and soldiers who couldn’t be trusted. They announced that personnel changes and mobilization of “appropriate reservists” had been carried out to ensure a loyal force for the threatened attack.

There was no announced military takeover. But in the absence of effective federal leadership, the ominous statement by Adzic seemed to amount to one.

“Formally, I am commander in chief of the armed forces. We have not yet seen the reality of a coup,” Mesic told reporters who asked if the Adzic declaration meant that there had been an army takeover.

Asked whether it is Milosevic, the hard-line nationalist Serbian president, who is actually in charge of the army, Mesic replied: “I don’t think so. We’ll see.”

The army high command in Belgrade, of which Adzic is in charge, warned late Monday that it would unleash “a massive and rigorous strike” against Slovenia unless the republic stopped trying to break up Yugoslavia with its secession.