New Cease-Fire Silences Guns Across Most of Yugoslavia

After a last brutal pounding, warring factions held their fire across most of Yugoslavia on Friday evening as the latest truce in the six-month-old civil war took effect.

But the Serb-led federal army almost immediately accused Croatian guardsmen of violating the truce by opening an assault along a 30-mile front east of Zagreb, according to the Belgrade-based news agency Tanjug.

Croatian radio reported earlier that guns fell silent at 6 p.m. at 10 different locations where fighting had raged earlier in the day.

But shortly after the cease-fire took effect, Croatian forces east of Zagreb began tank and artillery assaults on the federal army between the towns of Novska, to the west, and Kamensko, to the east, said Tanjug, quoting officials of the Serb-dominated army.

Tanjug also reported Croatian shelling of army troops near Lipik, in central Croatia, and Croatian artillery barrages on an airport near the Dalmatian port city of Zadar.

No casualty figures were given. Croatian officials had no immediate comment on the reports. As in accusations of previous cease-fire violations, it was impossible to independently verify the claims.

The latest truce, arranged by U.N. envoy Cyrus R. Vance, a former U.S. secretary of state, has a better chance than 14 previous ones because the warring sides agreed to talk rather than return fire by violators, officials said.

But the reported Croatian attack reflected only one of the many potential pitfalls for peace.

A leader of the Serb region of Krajina, in western Croatia, presented another threat. Mile Paspal said forces under his command rejected the truce, which “negates the will of the Serbian people.”

And pro-Serbian parties opened a militant conference in Belgrade on Friday to demand the creation of a new, Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, a move that could widen the war rather than end it.

At the forum, in which hard-line Communists and Serbian ultranationalists vented bitterness over the demise of the old federation, members of 159 political parties proclaimed a smaller, Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. They signed a final document, but it is not legally binding, said Radovan Karadzic, the leader of Serbs living in ethnically mixed Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The war began after Croatia declared its independence June 25. It pits Croats against Serb-led federal forces and Serb irregulars. Thousands of people have been killed, and Serbs have taken control of about a third of Croatia’s territory.

If the truce holds, Vance says the United Nations could deploy up to 10,000 peacekeepers to disarm Serbs and Croats and allow 700,000 refugees to return home.