New Cease-Fire Goes Into Effect in Yugoslavia

A new cease-fire went into effect between the Yugoslav federal army and Croatian national guard units Sunday, three days after the army launched a powerful drive to regain control of its encircled installations in the breakaway republic.

The cease-fire was announced simultaneously by federal Defense Minister Veljko Kadijevic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. Although there were numerous reported violations of the truce after it went into effect at 3 p.m., Croatian officials said the fighting had significantly diminished.

A citywide blackout, in effect since last Monday, was ended in Zagreb (despite sporadic gunfire around the center of the city about dusk), suggesting that the Croatian government regards the latest cease-fire more seriously than it did earlier, similar efforts to halt the fighting, which has claimed more than 500 lives since it began in July.

Zagreb Radio said federal forces had withdrawn their blockade of the Croatian port of Split on the Adriatic Sea, a city that had come under heavy attack in recent days.

Although this latest period of fighting was reported to be the heaviest and most widespread that the republic has seen in almost two months of combat, its results have appeared mixed.

The army, backed by tanks and heavy artillery, set out Thursday to regain control of its barracks and other facilities that had been blockaded by the Croatian national guard since Sept. 14.

But the army was evidently unable to break through to its besieged posts in eastern Croatia, where Croatian forces managed to attack depots and equip themselves with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.

Federal army units did succeed in taking the small city of Petrinja, only 40 miles south of Zagreb, just before the truce went into effect. The Tanjug news agency in the Serbian (and federal) capital of Belgrade announced that army forces also had punched through to the town of Vincovci, where heavy fighting had gone on for days.

At the same time, Croatian guardsmen forced the surrender of about 450 federal army troops who had been trapped inside a large tank corps barracks in Varazdin, northeast of Zagreb.

The withdrawal of the Varazdin tank garrison--its soldiers were shown on television leaving the barracks in a convoy of buses and private cars--gives the poorly equipped Croatian units access to about 120 tanks and armored personnel carriers.

Until recently, armored forces had seemed to provide a potentially decisive advantage for the federal troops, who have been fighting in concert with Serbian guerrilla units across all the southernmost regions of Croatia.

The Croatian blockade against the federal army facilities, put in force after a long series of military setbacks, has turned out to have been a key move for the Croatian forces, providing them with equipment and giving the population its first morsels of good news since the fighting began.

The cease-fire agreement calls for the Croatian side to once again allow medical assistance, water and electricity to be supplied to the blockaded military facilities but stops short of withdrawing the encircling troops.