President of Croatia Likely to Be Reelected : Balkans: In early returns, Franjo Tudjman has solid lead despite a war with Serbia that has cost nearly a third of nation’s territory.

Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, whose militant nationalism led his country to a declaration of independence from Yugoslavia and a subsequent war with Serbia that has reduced Croatian territory by nearly a third, appeared to be winning another term as president Sunday.

The electoral commission reported that with about 6% of the vote counted, Tudjman, with 57%, led his closest rival, Drazen Budisa, by 36 percentage points in the presidential race.

A former Communist general, Tudjman was chosen president by Parliament after his party, the Croatian Democratic Party (HDZ), won 205 of 356 seats in the last elections in 1990. He hopes to win a new, five-year term in Croatia’s first general election since it declared independence last year.

One Zagreb citizen, who voted for Tudjman despite a war with a Serb-dominated Yugoslav army that carved away Croatian territory that was poorly protected by Croatian forces in spite of a lot of saber-rattling rhetoric from Tudjman, said:

“You cannot change leaders at this stage. Maybe there will be someone better in five years, but now, we have to stick with him.”

Tudjman has been pressed hard by right-wing opponents who charge that he has presided over a military disaster for Croatia by concentrating on the trappings of pomp and power rather than preparing the country for the real-world conflict that has brought economic hardship and military embarrassment to the country.

Elsewhere Sunday there were these developments affecting the former Yugoslavia:

* In Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it is trying to get access to all detention camps in Bosnia-Herzegovina, including two camps in which the New York newspaper Newsday reported that hundreds of civilians are being executed or starved to death.

* Milan Panic, the Serbian-born Southern Californian who now heads the shrunken Yugoslav regime in Belgrade, said that his government is ready to bow to U.N. conditions for ending economic sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro, the only republics left in what used to be the six-republic country of Yugoslavia.

* A bullet-scarred bus carrying dozens of crying orphans left the suburbs of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, on the second leg of an escape journey that has claimed at least two young lives.

Here in Croatia, opponents blame President Tudjman for losing one-third of Croatia’s territory to Serbian and U.N. control in a bloody war that killed at least 10,000, devastated the country’s economy and destroyed much of its cultural heritage.

Besides the race for Croatia’s first popularly elected president, more than 25 parties were competing for 120 seats in Parliament’s lower house. Upper house elections will be held later.

The election results, which probably will not be announced until today, are not expected to cause a major shift in Croatia’s domestic or foreign policies no matter who wins; most of the favorites are nationalists with similar programs.

Indeed, the election campaign was fueled by a mood of militancy, exemplified by the campaign of former anti-Communist dissident Dobroslav Paraga, who heads the ultranationalist Croatian Party of Rights and advocates carrying the war to the Serbian-Yugoslav capital of Belgrade.

Final pre-election polls had shown Tudjman in the lead, closely followed by Budisa and his Croatian Social Liberal Party. If Tudjman does not win a majority in the first round, he will be forced into a runoff.

Tudjman’s other challengers include former Communist premier Savka Dapcevic-Kucar of the Croatian People’s Party.

Critics of the election process say there is no real way, given bizarre rules of the vote, to assess its fairness.

Croatia has a population of 4.5 million, but another 3 million votes may be cast abroad, with results to be telephoned to Zagreb from Croatian embassies overseas. Exactly what safeguards have been taken to ensure that the votes are valid have not been made public. Any adult who could demonstrate Croatian parentage was apparently eligible to vote.

Meanwhile, spokesman Claude Voillat said the Red Cross has so far visited a total of 4,000 people in five internment centers in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Associated Press reported from Geneva. All three ethnic factions--Serbs, Croats and Muslims--run such camps, Voillat said.

Newsday reported that the Serb conquerors of northern Bosnia have established two concentration camps in which more than a thousand civilians have been executed or starved and thousands more are being held until they die. The newspaper based its report on two witnesses who said they had been inmates, one at each of the camps--Omarska in northwest Bosnia and Brcko in northeast Bosnia.

Voillat told the Associated Press that the Red Cross has been negotiating with Serbian authorities to try to get access to the Omarska and Brcko camps. He said he did not know why permission to visit the camps has so far not been given.

A U.N. report published last week said that there were an estimated 11,000 prisoners at Omarska, AP reported. And a separate document published by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees cited accounts of guards at Omarska boasting they would “not waste bullets on their detainees, who have no food, water or shelter and who are beaten twice a day.” It cited one guard as saying that prisoners would “starve like animals.”

During a quick visit to neighboring Romania, Yugoslav Prime Minister Panic told a news conference: “My government is prepared to meet all requirements imposed by the United Nations to remove the sanctions against Yugoslavia.”

The British news agency Reuters reported that Panic met Romanian President Ion Iliescu, Prime Minister Teodor Stolojan and Foreign Minister Adrian Nastase. Panic said afterward that he accepted a Romanian proposal to hold a conference on the Yugoslav crisis in Bucharest.

From Sarajevo, the Associated Press reported that many of the orphans sobbed and struggled as they were put on their bus in the western suburb of Stup, the end of the so-called Sniper Alley highway from central Sarajevo.

The bus traveled through war-torn territory en route to the Croatian port of Split, where officials from a German orphanage waited with a chartered plane. AP reported that the children stopped for the night in a “secure” area in Fojnica, about 25 miles northwest of Sarajevo.

As the bus began its journey on Saturday, two of the orphans were killed by heavy fire that was apparently aimed at the vehicle.

Bosnia’s Serbian leader, Radovan Karadzic, denied that his forces attacked the bus, AP reported.