Regional Vote in Yugoslavia Risks Conflict : Referendum: A move to independence for Bosnia-Herzegovina in this weekend’s already deadly election could draw the republic into the civil war.

Muslims and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina defied Serbian roadblocks and deadly clashes Saturday to vote for independence in a referendum expected to add a fourth republic to the exodus from Yugoslavia.

The first of two days of balloting to measure public support for secession was marred by a gun battle that left three dead in the central Bosnian town of Travnik and a bomb explosion at a polling station in Konjic, in the northwest.

Saturday’s violence follows a spree of bombings and armed clashes that have raised fears that the divisive referendum could draw this multiethnic republic into Yugoslavia’s bloody civil war. Many of Bosnia’s Serbs insist on continued alliance with the republic of Serbia.

Sarajevo Radio also reported instances of Serbian vigilantes barring people from voting, and of rival Croatian roadblocks set up to harass rebellious Serbs.

Bosnia lies precariously between Serbia and Croatia, whose forces have been fighting for eight months and continue to engage each other despite an eight-week-old cease-fire and a Serbian proclamation Thursday that the war was over.

“There is a war psychosis in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” the republic’s Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic, warned as he cast his ballot in the capital.

Like most Muslims, who make up 44% of Bosnia’s 4.4 million people, and Croats, who are 18%, Izetbegovic planned to vote for independence. If the referendum wins majority endorsement, as expected, Bosnia would join Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia in seceding, leaving only Serbia and tiny Montenegro still in the truncated, 73-year-old Balkan federation.

Serbian leaders in Bosnia called for a boycott of the vote, but election officials said a surprising number of Serbs had cast ballots.

Montenegro’s 600,000 people are also to vote on independence today, but the pro-Serbian majority is likely to endorse continued unity.

Amid a fragile lull in the fighting that has killed an estimated 10,000 in Croatia, U.N. peacekeeping troops are planning to intervene in hopes the combatants will then be forced to negotiate their differences.

The U.N. deployment of up to 14,000 troops, to begin within 10 days, is also intended to ease tensions in Bosnia and prevent the Yugoslav war from spreading here.

But disturbing indications of plotting and subterfuge have surfaced in recent days, suggesting that the warring factions might attempt to sate their territorial appetites at Bosnia’s expense.

The Yugoslav People’s Army purged its top ranks of moderates and non-Serbs just two days before the referendum, and the pro-Serbian presidency that commands it has vowed not to pull troops out of Bosnia even if voters decide to secede.

Bosnia is home to about 1.35 million Serbs and most of Yugoslavia’s defense industries.

In the interest of self-preservation, the federal army is also supportive of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s vow to keep all 10 million Yugoslav Serbs united in one country, even though Milosevic himself has abandoned that cause because of growing anti-war sentiment in his own republic.

It was in defense of Croatia’s 600,000-strong Serbian minority that the federal army took Serbia’s side in the war that broke out after Croatia and Slovenia declared independence last June. The army already has tens of thousands of troops--almost exclusively Serbs--stationed in Bosnia, and more are expected as federal soldiers are forced to pull out of Croatia under the terms of the U.N. deployment plan.

Sarajevo’s Muslim and Croatian leaders fear that a virtually all-Serbian force could take the side of the Bosnian Serbs if they staged an armed rebellion against the majority’s expected vote for secession.

Serbs, who are 31% of Bosnia’s population, declared a new “Serbian Republic of Bosnia” on Friday and laid claim to two-thirds of Bosnia’s territory.

In another sign of brewing trouble, the political leader of Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, traveled to the Austrian city of Graz three days before the referendum for a secret meeting with representatives of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman.

No details of the talks have been made public, but Croatian and Serbian politicians have for months been discussing the possibility of carving up Bosnia into Serbian and Croatian zones.

Much of the territory claimed by the Serbs is adjacent to Serbian-controlled areas of Croatia, which could allow Serbs in the two republics to consolidate their holdings into a separate state.

The plan might appeal to Tudjman if he were to be granted the predominantly Croatian regions of Bosnia, near the Adriatic coast and around the city of Mostar.

Croatia has lost nearly one-third of its territory since war broke out last spring--a political setback that Tudjman can overcome only by winning much of it back or gaining new territories.

Although such a division of Bosnia might theoretically settle the dispute between Serbs and Croats, it would surely stir revolt among the Muslims, who are the largest ethnic group in Bosnia and have no other state.

It was fear of being divided for the convenience of the warring factions that prompted Bosnia’s Muslim and Croatian leaders to declare the republic sovereign last December and ask the European Community for recognition.

The referendum, which allowed Bosnian voters to cast ballots either Saturday or today, was deemed by the 12-nation EC to be necessary for recognition.

Kemal Kurspahic, editor of the multiethnic Sarajevo daily Oslobodjenje, predicted that about 70% would support independence. About 40% of the voting-age public cast ballots Saturday.

But even a solid majority in favor of secession will not automatically ensure EC recognition.

An EC commission that evaluated each republic’s qualifications for statehood in December judged only Slovenia and Macedonia to be worthy of recognition. Yet the EC decided in January to recognize Slovenia and Croatia.

Macedonia has been denied recognition because EC member Greece objects to the republic’s name, contending that it implies territorial aspirations toward the northern Greek region with the same name.

If the EC heeds Serbian objections to Bosnian independence, as it has so far in the conflict, the Sarajevo government could find itself in a protracted diplomatic limbo, sandwiched between two warring states and confronted with a revolt by Serbs and the federal army.