Splinter Groups Surface in Yugoslav War : Croatia: Nationalists offer their own historical truth. But one activist pays the price.

ZAGREB, Croatia — Among the gloomy byproducts of nationalist conflicts such as the one in Yugoslavia is the emergence of groups and parties armed not only with guns but with their own particular version of historical truth and manifest destiny.

For those involved, it seems an exhilarating business. It is also dangerous: On Saturday night it cost the life of Ante Paradzik, a Croatian political activist.

In the battles racking what is left of Yugoslavia, the republic of Serbia is full of determined nationalists, some of them now fighting in the villages and countryside of Croatia, bent on recovering for Serbia what they say are their historical homelands.

Nationalist groups have emerged as well here in Croatia, and in the last week one of them burst onto the scene with particular forcefulness, brandishing their World War II rifles and submachine guns, while their leaders, longtime political dissidents, lashed out at the Croatian government for its passivity in the face of an invasion.

Known by its Croatian initials HSP, the Croatian Party of Rights took back what it said was its historical headquarters, dating from its founding in 1861, and began handing out posters featuring an enlarged map of Croatia bordered with portraits of the republic’s leaders dating from King Tomislav I (whose rule ended in 928) to Ante Pavelic, the World War II Nazi collaborator and head of Croatia’s Ustashe government.

HSP “guardsmen” also began to take up positions alongside regular Croatian guardsmen outside besieged federal army barracks in Zagreb. Their leaders talked of having a command structure that “coordinated” HSP activities with the national guard but is “separate” from it.

“The Croatian Party of Rights can decide where these forces are needed and send them where it wants,” declared Dobroslav Paraga, party president.

Paraga made this declaration Saturday, when HSP’s leaders went public in a bold way, accusing Croatian President Franjo Tudjman of being a “traitor” for offering to supply food and water to blockaded federal troops.

Paradzik, a party vice president, said that HSP militia forces number 10,000 and are “deployed across the country.” He claimed that HSP has equipped its militia with Soviet-built anti-aircraft missiles and displayed one to reporters.

“We have neutralized a number of (federal army) MIG aircraft and will continue to do so,” he said.

This is not the sort of dissidence and political initiative that has done well over the years in Croatia, as Paradzik and Paraga both knew, since both served a number of years in prison in the 1970s for their political opposition to the former Communist regime.

It is their belief, they said, that the government of President Tudjman is but a scant improvement over the Communists, that the highest levels of the administration are salted with former officials of the security apparatus and that, worst of all, Tudjman’s policies are resulting in the dismemberment of the republic.

These views were disclosed Saturday morning.

Saturday evening, Paradzik, along with a driver and a Canadian emigre fund-raiser, were returning to Zagreb from a political meeting 40 miles outside the capital. As they approached the city, they stopped at a series of roadblocks and checkpoints manned by Croatian police and national guardsmen.

At the fifth and last checkpoint, at the suburb of Sesvete, a guardsman approached the car from the passenger side. He stopped, took five steps backward, lowered his gun and fired a hail of bullets into the car. Paradzik, 48, was hit 13 times in the chest and stomach. The driver, screaming, “Don’t shoot, we’re with you!” was seriously wounded.

The Canadian, Ivica Orsanic, 52, of Toronto, threw himself to the floor of the back seat, played dead and thus survived to provide an account of the incident. He told of hearing a captain of the guards berating the guardsman for opening fire, and hearing the guardsman say, “They were shooting at me.”

“That’s a lie,” Orsanic said.

Branko Salaj, the Tudjman government spokesman, said that Paradzik was shot because his car had attempted to run two roadblocks, an assertion that Orsanic also claimed was untrue, describing how the driver of the car had exchanged pleasantries with an acquaintance at a roadblock only 300 yards before the checkpoint where the shooting occurred.

Milan Vukovic, a Croatian emigre who returned from Houston to serve as Paraga’s assistant, looked haggard Sunday, briefing journalists at the party headquarters.

“From start to finish, it was an assassination,” he said. “For us, it was a political killing.”

The HSP militiamen were beginning to pack up some of the ammunition cases that lined the halls, some saying they were “moving out,” although Vukovic denied that the government had given them orders to disband.