Belgrade Stands in a Long, Patriotic Line for Gasoline : Yugoslavia: Motorists see the inconvenience as the price they must pay for standing up to Western Europe.

It could be said that Branislav Aleksic is simply examining the silver lining of the ominous cloud that hangs over his future.

He brushes off the inconvenience of having to wait hours in line to buy gasoline, turning the daylong errand into an outing, sharing sandwiches and quality time with a 9-year-old son he rarely sees during the week.

“You know, in all the madness, in all the running around, in all the worrying of everyday life, this gives me a little time to spend with my son,” said the 35-year-old accountant, unperturbed by a republic-wide fuel shortage, as he removed the gas cap to finally take his turn at the pump.

But like most Belgrade car owners forced to devote large chunks of their weekends in search of increasingly scarce gas, Aleksic ascribes little importance to the lengthening fuel lines and the winter hardships they foreshadow.

The gas lines are so far Serbia’s most visible consequence of the war with Croatia, which has raged for nearly five months and taken an estimated 7,000 lives.

Most Yugoslav oil-refining facilities are located in Croatia, as is the pipeline that for years carried Soviet and Middle East fuel deliveries inland from the Adriatic.

Croatia, in control of the taps, has shut off supplies to its enemy. And neither Serbia nor its sole Yugoslav ally, tiny Montenegro, has a port equipped to handle the quantities of fuel needed to make up for the Croatian blockade.

The Soviet Union--Yugoslavia’s main oil supplier and a longtime ally of Communist Serbia--is distracted by its own domestic crises and reluctant to pitch in. Heeding the advice of Western Europe, Moscow has declined to step up energy deliveries that could have the effect of prolonging the bloody Yugoslav fight.

The 12-nation European Community, angered by the battling republics’ refusal to abide by a cease-fire, has slapped on trade sanctions and appealed to the United Nations for a global oil embargo to force a halt to the war.

But Serbian leaders, resisting European attempts to mediate, have declared that they will not be starved into submission by the West.

Those waiting at the pumps throughout Belgrade refuse to believe that there is any serious threat of further gas or heating-oil shortages. They see the fuel crisis as temporary and expect the difference to be made up by friendly countries, such as the oil-producing nations with which Yugoslavia has been associated in the Non-Aligned Movement.

Aleksic and thousands of other drivers, forced to spend much of their free time in pursuit of fuel, have taken their cues from the Serbian leaders. They rationalize the long wait for gas as a form of patriotic resistance to Western Europe, which they blame for the war that led to the pipeline shut-off.

Bent on seeing their lost time as an honorable sacrifice, some even claim that the waiting can be fun, or at least productive.

Older drivers say they enjoy the solitude of several hours in the car with a good book, away from cramped apartments and the worries of daily life.

Young drivers organize group fill-ups, arriving together at the end of the line so they can gossip and combine muscle power to push cars through what is often a five-hour wait. They bring beer, playing cards and boom boxes, turning the chore into a rolling tailgate party.

“You get to meet different people, and you see friends you haven’t run into for a long time,” said Dragan Rekic, a 20-year-old student filling up his father’s car.

Some, like 11-year-old Adan Jeserovsky, have learned to cash in on the crisis. He trolls the line of idle motorists with a bucket and squeegee, cleaning windshields and mopping headlights for tips.

“I can make 1,000 dinars on a good day,” said the industrious street child. That’s between $20 and $50, depending on the dinar’s ever-changing unofficial rate.

Others peddle coffee or sandwiches, toting their wares along the rows of cars like vendors at Dodger Stadium.

Ivan, an enterprising teen-ager, has tapped into the lucrative market of self-deception. The unemployed youth drives to the homes or offices of motorists who don’t want to wait in line and for the humble sum of 250 dinars, plus the price of gas, brings the car back with its tank full.

He claimed to be besieged with business after advertising his services in the Belgrade daily newspaper Politika. But, like his Serbian compatriots, he said he does not see the gas crisis as anything more serious than a temporary consequence of foreign conspiracy that Belgrade’s leaders will soon counteract.

“We have a lot of friends in the world, and there will be no oil embargo,” agreed Dusan Trickovic, a 39-year-old shop clerk filling up for the first time in two months.

He blamed the federal government--especially the free-market reforms of embattled Prime Minister Ante Markovic--for bringing on Serbia’s economic crisis by seeking closer ties with old adversaries in the West.

“The traitors of our people are to blame,” judged Aleksic, recapping his fuel tank after its weekly fill-up. “The federal government brought us to this point. They are the ones who sold out the country.”

Most observers, like foreign diplomats in Belgrade, blame Serbia’s own leadership for the fuel crisis. While not solely responsible for the war, Serbian nationalism set in motion the cycle of ethnic hostility and economic boycott that has culminated in violence and bankrupted all Yugoslav republics.

Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic has skillfully persuaded fellow Serbs that the West is against them, defusing political responsibility--at least for the moment--for the most painful economic hardship to hit Serbia since he became head of state.

But as winter progresses and the consequences of war and diplomatic isolation become more apparent, Western envoys predict that the Serbian leadership will find it difficult to convince deprived citizens that they are not really hungry or cold.