YUGOSLAVIA : Mother’s War for Children : A California woman fights for return of youngsters spirited to Serbia by ex-husband.

Five Yugoslav courts have upheld Shayna Gluck Lazarevich’s right to custody of her two kidnaped children, but the mounting pile of legal victories is small comfort to the distraught California mother.

More than two years after Sasha and Andre Lazarevich were spirited to rural Serbia by their father, they remain hostages in a country indifferent to its own laws and international pressure.

American diplomats have been pressing for release of the children through the official Yugoslav federal channels--which most other Western countries have conceded no longer function. Forced to respect kangaroo-court maneuvers and barter with powerless puppets, the diplomats charged with winning the children’s freedom appear to be as much hostages as 6-year-old Andre and 9-year-old Sasha.

BACKGROUND--In early 1989, after seven years of marriage, Gluck divorced Dragisa Lazarevich, a Yugoslav citizen who had lived in the United States for 18 years. The Los Angeles Superior Court awarded her primary custody of the children and Lazarevich visitation rights.

In September, 1989, after Gluck had moved from Downey to Santa Cruz, Lazarevich picked up the children at her apartment for what was supposed to be a weekend outing. Instead, Lazarevich, who had an extensive criminal record unbeknown to his ex-wife, took them to Yugoslavia and has defied repeated American and Yugoslav orders to return them to their mother.

Gluck, who recently reverted to using her maiden name, has spent most of the last two years plodding through the labyrinthine Yugoslav justice system.

All five court decisions have been in her favor. But against a background of disintegrating federal order and the Serb-Croat civil war, Lazarevich has kept up a series of nuisance suits to delay enforcement of the court orders.

UPDATE--The Supreme Court of Serbia last year upheld federal decisions to recognize Gluck’s right to take the children back to California. But the Yugoslav Ministry of Justice refused to enforce the decision as long as Lazarevich’s lawsuit alleging that Gluck was an unfit mother was still making its way through lower courts.

Belgrade’s First Municipal Court ruled in October that the claim against Gluck was unfounded. But Judge Blanka Pandak-Miskovic awarded temporary custody to the father to prevent the children from leaving Yugoslav jurisdiction in case Lazarevich chose to appeal.

In the same month, the Belgrade Criminal Court found Lazarevich guilty of kidnaping the children. But he was fined only the equivalent of $40.

“I was awarded custody, and he was convicted of kidnaping, but he gets to keep the kids!” said a disbelieving Gluck.

PROSPECTS--There are a number of ways the drama could be played out:

- Gluck could persist through Yugoslav government channels to get her right to custody enforced. But Serbian police and social workers loyal to the father have repeatedly defied federal orders to assist in getting the children to U.S. Embassy officials or to Gluck. Lazarevich has guards watching them at school and moves them around among the homes of friends and relatives. And he has been quoted in Serbian media as saying he will remain an “outlaw” rather than give them up.

- Lazarevich could keep up the deterrence for a few more months, when the delays will work even more to his advantage. Yugoslav law allows children above the age of 10 to decide for themselves which parent they prefer to live with after a divorce. Sasha, who will be 10 in September, has not been allowed to see her mother alone since she was kidnaped, and Gluck fears she is being exposed to intense pressure to stay with her father.

- The U.S. government, through its embassy in Belgrade, could mount a stronger campaign with Serbian authorities to win the children’s freedom. Although Belgrade officials have so far been unmoved by diplomatic pressure on the case from as high as U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Washington has been supportive of Serbia by continuing to recognize the Yugoslav nation, whose government has actually been taken over by Serbs. As long as the United States refuses to join other countries in recognizing rival Croatia as an independent country, “we have a chip that the others don’t have to play with,” one American official said.

But the rules of diplomacy appear to dictate against calling in a political debt. Asked whether Washington might cash in on its perceived bargaining clout with Serbia by asking for a gesture of goodwill in the Lazarevich case, U.S. Consul General Robert Tynes replied: “Diplomats wouldn’t do it that way.”