Ethnic Warfare Must Stop Before Peace Talks Start, EC Warns Yugoslavs : Balkans: European foreign ministers will meet in Brussels today to decide if a planned weekend conference should go forward.

An exasperated Europe warned battling Yugoslavs on Thursday that there can be no international peace conference to seek an end to bloody ethnic warfare while the violence continues.

Foreign ministers of the alarmed, committed but so far ineffective European Community meet today in Brussels to decide whether to convene the weekend conference as scheduled in The Hague.

All sides in the struggle between independence-seeking Croats and Serbian irregulars supported by the Yugoslav army agreed to an immediate cease-fire Monday.

Since then, the guns have fallen silent only long enough to be reloaded. In a series of attacks against outgunned Croatian militia, the Serbs have swallowed ever greater chunks of territory. Foreign observers here see the drive to be an accelerating attempt to isolate Zagreb from the rich farming areas in eastern Croatia and the Adriatic coast.

When the cease-fire was signed, rebellious Serbs in Croatia, who vow they will not live cut off from their ethnic kin in neighboring Serbia, controlled about a fifth of Croatia, by most estimates.

Piecing together reports from Croatian sources, the editors of the liberal magazine Vreme here in Belgrade said that the Croatian government appears to have lost control of around 40% of its territory. But the editors cautioned that the losses may be overstated by Croatia to generate foreign sympathy among governments in Western Europe, where Serbia stands accused of being the aggressor in the fraternal bloodshed that has claimed around 400 lives.

“The Serbs don’t observe the cease-fire because they are winning. Why should they stop just for Europe’s sake?” asked Milos Vasic, a military analyst at Vreme.

Testing its muscles in an unprecedented bid at foreign problem-solving, the 12-nation European Community is manifestly frustrated by Yugoslav intransigence. Amid reports of fresh Serbian attacks on Thursday, Europe dispatched an envoy to Yugoslavia, Henri Wijnaendts, the Dutch ambassador to France, in a last-ditch effort to save its peace initiative--and the credibility of its united foreign policy in the Yugoslav affray.

Arriving in the Croatian capital of Zagreb before embarking on a tour of the battle areas, Wijnaendts spoke plainly: “Those who might think it could be to their advantage not to accept the cease-fire are absolutely mistaken, because the Europeans really won’t take that any longer.

“If, in the days which separate us from the conference, we conclude that one or more parties does not abide by the cease-fire, we will inform the EC and they will have to draw the conclusions,” he said in remarks pointedly directed at the hard-line Serbian government.

Germany, for one, has warned that, if the fighting continues, it will quickly recognize the independence of Croatia and the neighboring and now quiet republic of Slovenia.

From London, Britain’s Lord Carrington, charged by Europe with leading the conference, was as direct as Europe’s man on the spot in Zagreb in casting doubts about whether Europe will bother hosting a conference for antagonists who would rather fight than talk.

“I can’t see anybody sitting round a table, either Serbs or Croats or anybody else, while this fighting is going on,” he told the British Broadcasting Corp. “You can’t have a peace conference in which people don’t want to agree.”

There was speculation both here and in Zagreb that the stepped-up attacks since Monday were an attempt by Serbia to grab as much territory as possible within Croatia before talks begin.

Counterpoint speculation was that Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic could not now easily rein in the Serbian irregulars advancing strongly against lightly armed Croatian troops, often with army support.

Serbs, who by Thursday were controlling large areas of eastern and southern Croatia, are a 600,000-member minority in the republic of 4.75 million. It historically has been scarred by deep-seated ethnic enmity.

In the latest fighting, mortars struck a number of towns and the Croatian-held crossroads city of Vukovar and Osijek again Thursday. Hospital officials in Osijek said seven people had been killed in the area Wednesday and Thursday morning. In central Croatia, new attacks also were reported in Pakrac and Petrinja, and in Gospic and Otocac in the western reaches of the republic. All are areas the Serbian irregulars have vowed to seize.

The superhighway between Belgrade and Zagreb, the last road link between the Croatian capital and the eastern arm of the republic, remained closed Thursday and patrolled by Serbian irregulars near the town of Okucani, about 70 miles from Zagreb. Rail links to Zagreb are also cut and the airport is closed.

Croatian radio said its forces destroyed two army tanks and a personnel carrier in Laslovo, near Osijek, and the Croatian government preemptively rejected a plan by a commission of Yugoslav’s powerless federal presidency to allow internal border changes. The plan, which must be approved by all six Yugoslav republics, would open the way for Serbian-populated areas of Croatia to remain under Belgrade’s rule if the rest of Croatia successfully secedes.