Serb-Croat Battle for Krajina Quickens

Serb rebels exchanged heavy artillery fire with Croatian government troops along a 30-mile front near the Adriatic Sea on Monday in what U.N. officials fear is a steadily intensifying struggle for the disputed Krajina region.

The fighting flared after a relative lull over the weekend, when Croatian soldiers and civil engineers scrambled to plug holes in a dam weakened by an earlier firefight and while the combatants throughout former Yugoslav territory pondered the consequences of a threatened U.N. pullout.

Since Croatian troops broke a year-old cease-fire Jan. 22 by invading the Serb-occupied Krajina region, U.N. peacekeepers have been powerless to deter the spread of fighting and have been exposed to increased danger from the cross-fire.

U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali warned last week that he may order a withdrawal of the 25,000-troop peacekeeping mission here in view of the escalating violence.

A Geneva peace conference on the conflict in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina collapsed Saturday after five months of fruitless negotiation mediated by U.N. and European Community officials, heightening fears that the Balkan combatants are poised for a wider, uncontrollable bloodletting.

Brutality against civilians in the 18-month-old war has shocked the international community. Tens of thousands have been killed, 2 million are homeless and untold thousands of others have been tortured or raped.

The Serb-dominated rump federation of Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro, has already been saddled with wide-ranging U.N. sanctions for fomenting Serb uprisings in Croatia and Bosnia.

Some foreign powers, primarily Russia, have also appealed for sanctions against Croatia since its incursion into the Krajina to retake territory lost during a six-month Serb rebellion in 1991.

Croatian Radio reported Serb attacks on a chain of towns and villages stretching inland from the port of Zadar, and U.N. spokeswoman Shannon Boyd said peacekeepers in the area had confirmed the offensive in reports to mission headquarters here.

“These are more than skirmishes. There is heavy fighting going on all along that newly established confrontation line,” Boyd said of the region between Zadar and the Serb-held city of Benkovac.

Another U.N. source, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed reports of Serbs massing between the rebel stronghold of Knin and the area around the Peruca Dam that has been the scene of frantic repairs and reinforcement since the structure was seriously damaged last Thursday.

The 215-foot-high dam that holds back an 11-mile-long mountain reservoir has been eroding at its foundation since Krajina Serbs detonated mines at the complex as they were forced to retreat under intense artillery fire.

Croatian and British engineers discovered a new breach in the earth-filled concrete structure Sunday but stuck by their earlier assessment that the dam was not in imminent danger of collapse.

At least 20,000 people live in the wide valley below the dammed lake, which is being drained to relieve pressure on the damaged retaining wall.

While Croats accused the rebel Serbs of instigating the latest Krajina conflicts, the Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency insisted the fighting was rekindled by tank and infantry assaults by Croats on the Serb-occupied towns of Benkovac and Obrovac.

A commander of the Krajina rebels, Gen. Mile Novakovic, protested in a letter to U.N. headquarters in Zagreb that Croats were on the offensive and warned that his forces would “do everything to stop this aggression,” Tanjug reported.

The Krajina, where Serbs fleeing Turkish rule of their homeland settled centuries ago, has been at the center of Serb-Croat fighting sparked by the Zagreb leadership’s declaration of an independent Croatia in June, 1991. Croatia’s Serb minority, which accounts for about 12% of its nearly 5 million citizens, wants the territory to remain united with the republic of Serbia and Serb-held areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Fighting in Bosnia between rebel Serbs and government forces was also reported to have escalated Monday, especially in the republic’s northeast.

Serb tanks and heavy artillery encircling Sarajevo have been pounding the capital for nearly a week in a renewed drive to conquer it while Western governments are paralyzed with indecision over how to force an end to the war.