Muslims and Croatian Allies Battle : Balkans: British peacekeeper is killed in fighting. The flare-up dims already slim hopes for peace in Bosnia.

An outbreak of fighting between supposedly allied Muslims and Croats killed a British peacekeeper in central Bosnia-Herzegovina on Wednesday and dealt another blow to already slim prospects for a negotiated end to the bitter Bosnian war.

British forces based in this city about 45 miles northwest of Sarajevo said that Muslim-Croat clashes have been flaring in nearby Travnik and Gorni Vakuf for almost a week. Aid agency workers reported intensified fighting on all fronts of the 9-month-old war.

The battles have been especially fierce in areas that still have mixed populations, raising speculation that the combatants are engaged in last-minute campaigns to strengthen their hold on coveted territory in advance of an expected ethnic division of the shattered state.

Western mediators conducting peace talks in Geneva have pressured all sides in the Bosnian conflict to accept a political reconfiguration of the former Yugoslav republic into 10 provinces defined largely by ethnicity. Under the plan, Serbs would control half the republic where they were 31% of the population, with Muslims and Croats roughly splitting what would be left.

The fertile, mountainous region of central Bosnia has been the scene of a number of deadly clashes between Muslims and Croats, who elsewhere are allied against Serbs rebelling against independence and integration. At least 14 people were killed in Vitez and Prozor in late October and early November.

Like the earlier breakdowns that set the allies fighting each other, the past week’s rash of gun battles, kidnapings and heavy artillery fire appears to have been sparked by fears that the area will be victimized once under the rule of a single ethnic group.

Croats in the region have become increasingly forceful in asserting their right to rule, claiming it was their soldiers and weaponry that saved what little is left of Bosnia from a brutal Serbian offensive that has killed tens of thousands and conquered 70% of the republic’s land.

“There’s been a lot of ethnic fighting in the whole area since the murder of a Muslim four or five days ago,” said Mervyn Wynne-Jones, a spokesman for the British Cheshire regiment deployed here. “It escalated with the Muslims taking three HVO (Croatian soldiers) hostage, then the HVO taking three Muslims, with a lot of tit-for-tat shootings . . . until the Muslims finally called the Brits and asked if we could do something.”

British commander Col. Bob Stewart traveled to Gorni Vakuf early Wednesday to broker a cease-fire after the city suffered a night of intense shelling and machine-gun fire. While Stewart was meeting with leaders of the Muslim and Croatian factions, a 26-year-old soldier driving a heavily armored Warrior vehicle through the city was killed by small-arms fire.

“We do not know who the weapon belonged to or whether it was specifically aimed at the vehicle” driven by Lance Cpl. Wayne Edwards, Wynne-Jones said.

Edwards, the 23rd U.N. soldier to be killed since the 23,000-strong peacekeeping force began deploying in April, was based in Gorni Vakuf. He was escorting an ambulance through the city when he was slain.

The soldier’s mission was unrelated to Stewart’s intervention, which produced an agreement by both Muslims and Croats later in the day to halt their conflict. “A cease-fire came into effect this afternoon and seems to be holding,” Wynne-Jones said.

While the flare-up in central Bosnia was quelled, Bosnian Serbs gave further indications that the political settlement they reluctantly accepted “in principle” Tuesday in Geneva might be vetoed by the rebels’ self-styled Parliament or made subject to further revision.

Bosnian Croat chieftain Mate Boban and the republic’s Muslim leader, President Alija Izetbegovic, had agreed earlier to the division proposed by U.N. envoy Cyrus R. Vance and European Community negotiator Lord Owen. Izetbegovic objected to the mediators’ proposed map, accusing the United Nations and EC of rewarding Serbs for the practice of “ethnic cleansing,” in which hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Croats have been made homeless.

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic rejected the mediators’ plan, insisting that Serbs receive a geographically contiguous, independent state of their own. But under pressure from Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who controls the fuel and other vital supplies for the war in Bosnia, Karadzic agreed to accept the Vance-Owen draft, on condition it wins endorsement from his Parliament.

Bosnia’s Muslim-led government dismissed the move as an effort to forestall complete collapse of the Geneva peace process. Karadzic was granted another seven days to bring back an answer.

Several figures in the putative rebel government and leaders of Serbian paramilitary factions denounced the agreement for its failure to provide Bosnian Serbs with their own state and predicted the Parliament would vote it down. Belgrade-based warlord Vojislav Seselj and the vice president of the Bosnian Serbs, Biljana Plavsic, were quoted by Bosnian Serb media as saying the terms of the settlement were unacceptable.

Karadzic himself raised doubts about Serbian commitment to the proposal when he told Belgrade Radio that “a lot of possibilities to achieve our objectives” remain.