Yugoslav Conflict Inflicts Harsh Toll on the Innocent : Civil war: Recognizing the secessionist republics may be the best way to halt the bloodshed, Europeans say.

It may be hard to find innocent parties in the bitter war between Serbs and Croats, but Ante Kardun is undoubtedly one of them.

The wounded Croat, confined to a special ward of the underground hospital in this battered Adriatic port, has played no part in the war for independence. He harbors no resentment toward Serbs nor any grudge against the Yugoslav army whose Christmas Day assault killed his mother and left him with only one leg.

Ante Kardun is free of hatred and hostility. He is only 10 months old.

Like many civilian casualties of the war in Croatia, the red-haired infant with the bandaged stump fell victim to the war because he lives within territory the federal army seeks to wrest from Croatia.

While the army succeeded in taking much of the land it covets before the latest cease-fire, its apparent disregard for the welfare of women, children and elderly of all ethnic origins has become an obstacle to completing its territorial objectives.

The killing and maiming of civilians, like the Kardun baby and his mother, has exposed the military campaign as one of random terror and subjected the Yugoslav army to growing international outrage.

Western politicians and European truce monitors are increasingly concluding during the breathing space provided by the 10-day-old cease-fire that recognition of the secessionist republics may now be the best means of protecting the innocent.

“Public opinion is proving to be a very powerful factor in deciding whether to recognize” the breakaway republics, said one official with the European Community’s monitoring mission in Croatia. “In some countries of the EC, the public has been shocked by the images on television and in other media showing the suffering of Croatian civilians.”

While concerns persist over the Croatian leadership’s treatment of minorities and guarantees of democracy, the army’s apparent priority of territorial conquest over civilian security has been pushing some Western governments toward recognition.

The Vatican on Monday formally recognized predominantly Roman Catholic Croatia and Slovenia as independent states, following Pope John Paul II’s denunciation of federal attacks on civilians.

Germany unilaterally extended diplomatic ties to the two republics last month, saying that recognition might afford some protection for their populations. After four Italian truce monitors and a French colleague were killed in an army attack on their EC helicopter last week, Italy also announced that it would recognize the republics.

Even in the United States, which has steadfastly fought dissolution of the Yugoslav federation it helped create in 1918, politicians are now defecting from the Administration’s anti-secession policy. U.S. Reps. John Miller of Washington and Susan Molinari of New York, both Republicans, announced Monday after a fact-finding mission in Croatia that they will push for American recognition once Congress reconvenes Jan. 23.

“The time has come for the United States, a beacon of democracy and freedom in the world, to try to use all reasonable means to bring peace to this region,” Miller said after a four-day visit that included tours of the front, refugee camps and a hospital treating wounded civilians.

Much of the army’s advance into Croatia is aimed at self-preservation. The military has been fighting on behalf of the Serbian republic because it has been promised a new lease on life as the Serbian army if it first holds onto geographic assets that it has taken from Croatia.

The new Yugoslavia on Serbia’s drawing boards encompasses the Adriatic coast as far north as Karlobag--about 35 miles north of Zadar--as well as the rich farmland of northeastern Croatia and an important industrial triangle just south of Zagreb.

After six months of war in which 10,000 have died and more than 600,000 have been swept from their homes, the Serbian-led army has pushed within sight of achieving its objectives.

The Jan. 3 cease-fire has largely held, despite the failure of 14 previous truces, giving rise to hopes abroad that the Yugoslav war may be approaching an end. But because the army has failed to win Zadar or other major ports, such as Dubrovnik, few who live in the targeted territory believe today’s relative peace will be long-lasting.

Army renegades striving to preserve a Yugoslav state are blamed for last week’s deadly attack on an EC helicopter, an incident that claimed five peace monitors’ lives and that prompted the resignation of Defense Minister Veljko Kadijevic and his replacement by a reputed hard-liner, Gen. Blagoje Adzic.

The army’s claim that the EC crew had failed to properly announce their flight to Belgrade authorities has angered the European mediators and deepened doubts about the federal forces’ professed commitment to a peaceful solution.

While civilian targets have come under fire throughout the areas of Croatia that the army seeks to control, the military campaign to expand Serbia is most apparent along the Adriatic. Protection of Serbs in Croatia from persecution has been an excuse offered for army invasion of Serbian-dominated regions, but few of Croatia’s 600,000 Serbs live in the coastal communities.

Zadar’s deep harbor and strategic location midway along the Yugoslav coastline is believed to have made the city of 135,000 an important target of the federal armed forces, whose navy would have no outlet to sea if it was limited to defending landlocked Serbia.

“They want to conquer Zadar . . . and in that way, they will cut off all of Dalmatia,” said Col. Josip Tulicic, commander of the national guard in the Zadar region. Tulicic said he fears that the worst of the fighting is not yet over and speculated that the army is using the current cease-fire to rest and regroup.

Governments of the 12-nation EC are to begin considering recognition for Croatia and three other republics as of Wednesday, which, along with the proposed deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force, could set off a new round of violence between secessionist Croats and the army-backed Serbs.

U.N. intervention is opposed by hard-line factions within the army, as well as by Serbs in the Krajina region of Croatia that stretches from just east of Zadar to the border with Hungary.

Almost no one who has weathered the three-month siege of Zadar believes the current cease-fire will hold.

“Any one of these nights they will start attacking again,” said Elvis Perkovic, a 20-year-old bartender wounded in a federal air raid just minutes before the latest truce took effect. “They are getting something out of this--important territories,” said Perkovic, a Croatian reservist, referring to the army. “My feeling is that the war will keep going until they get everything they want.”

Even some of the children being treated at Zadar’s dimly lit hospital, which has operated on generator power in the basement since electricity and upper floors were knocked out two months ago, are fearful that another wave of bombing looms in the near future.

“They brought us here to be safe,” said 8-year-old Hrvoje Brkic, whose mother was killed and his 6-year-old sister injured in the Dec. 31 attack that blew off his left leg and broke the right one. “It was dangerous where we lived,” the child explained between bouts of tears over his mother. “But now it is dangerous everywhere.”