Serbian Occupiers Resolve Not to Be Uprooted Again : Balkans: In annexed Croatian region, there is a silent threat of bloody confrontation between expelled and expellers.

Serbian occupiers of the fertile farmland in eastern Croatia know how they’ll deal with threatened attempts by expelled Croats to reclaim their homes.

“I would grab my gun and I would shoot them. That’s how most people would react,” said Dusan Gasparovic, a 63-year-old refugee from Grubisno Polje who has no intention of moving out of the comfortable farmhouse he acquired after a Croatian family fled more than a year ago.

Now preparing their confiscated fields for a second winter slumber under Serbian stewardship, Gasparovic and his neighbors seem to have irreversibly annexed the once-multiethnic Baranja region to the chain of Serbian fiefdoms known as the Krajina.

U.N. troops are deployed throughout the disputed Krajina, but they have no orders to prevent Serbian resettlement or to compel roving bands of gunmen to allow the restoration of Croatian control.

As the ethnic pieces of the old Yugoslavia are being rearranged after more than a year of deadly combat, rival Serbian and Croatian leaders are believed to have cut a deal to divide the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina between them.

Most of Bosnia-Herzegovina is expected to remain in Serbian hands; in exchange, Belgrade is to recognize Croatia within its prewar borders and abandon efforts to formally annex the Krajina.

But throughout the Krajina region that stretches in a 350-mile-long arc from this fertile basin near the border with Serbia to the Adriatic Sea, Serbs are so unquestionably in command that a return to Croatian rule seems impossible without another outbreak of full-scale war.

Belgrade’s inability to deliver on its part of the proposed carve-up is not only delaying a formal settlement at Yugoslav peace talks in Geneva, it is threatening to undo what little good has resulted from the largely ineffective U.N. mission.

Fighting between Serbian rebels and the Croatian national guard has tapered off since U.N. troops arrived in the spring, and Yugoslav federal soldiers and their hardware have been withdrawn from the Krajina in accordance with a plan drafted by special U.N. envoy Cyrus R. Vance.

But the Vance plan also calls for disarming civilians and paramilitary units in the conflict areas, a move aimed at creating a climate of confidence that would allow hundreds of thousands who fled the Krajina battles to move back.

It is there that the mission has stumbled, largely because Serbian warlords much prefer to decide for themselves who is welcome back in the vanquished territory they rule. And neither the U.N. peacekeepers here nor international mediators in Geneva have any leverage for compelling the Serbian occupiers to agree to a disarmament that would weaken their grip.

Armed vigilantes dressed as police officers are the law in the volatile region. Little deterred by the U.N. presence, the Serbian gunmen harass non-Serbian holdouts, perpetuating the campaign of “ethnic cleansing” that has already driven out most Croats, Hungarians and Slovaks.

Croatian authorities agreed to the U.N. deployment almost a year ago because they believed that the foreign forces would help them recover their occupied land. The Serbs, on the other hand, correctly calculated that the U.N. presence would discourage Croatian counterattacks on their de facto annex.

But Croatian authorities in Zagreb are growing impatient with what they see as an intervention that is protecting Serbian rule over territory the Western world has recognized as part of Croatia.

Croatian President Franjo Tudjman has vowed to veto an extension of the peacekeepers’ mandate when it expires in February, putting the world on notice that the war in Croatia is not over.

If the U.N. soldiers are forced to withdraw, the Serbs now enjoying exclusive domain over eastern Croatia would be exposed to retaliatory strikes by the ever-strengthening Croatian army.

Despite the silent threat of an even bloodier confrontation than the one they won last year, the Serbs who are now a majority here contend that they are sufficiently armed and organized to repel any Croatian attack.

From the newly resettled farmers to the rebel fighters now calling themselves Krajina police, few here believe this area will ever be under Zagreb rule again.

“They can never come back. This is Serbian land now. Everyone here is ready to defend it, to the last man if necessary,” Gasparovic said.

Fierce propaganda concocted by the nationalist regime in Belgrade has convinced fellow Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina that they are the targets of a heinous plot by other ethnic groups and foreign enemies to exterminate the Serbian people. Many here and elsewhere in the Krajina believe that they had to drive out their non-Serbian neighbors to ensure their own survival.

The Serbs’ unshakable conviction that their resettlement was forced by the Croats, not their own nationalist forces who attacked the Croatian towns from which they fled, is behind their resolve not to be uprooted again.

“There can be no Croatian government here because we are independent now,” said Dragica Adjelic, 35, a Serbian native of Knezevi Vinogradi. “This is definitely not part of Croatia. It is not even open to negotiation.”