A Distant War Is All Too Close to Home : Croatia: A woman’s one-billboard plea for her homeland is most visible to those who already share her pain.

It’s the sign of a small world.

When Ljerka Miller decided to vent her anger over the turmoil 7,000 miles away in her Croatian homeland, she drove hundreds of miles through Los Angeles hunting for a billboard to carry her protest.

But when an advertising company finally offered her one she could afford, it turned out to be a mere 200 yards from Southern California’s main Croatian cultural center in San Pedro.

“I was shocked when I saw where it was,” said Miller, 51, a school purchasing agent. “I called them back and said, ‘You won’t believe where this is.’ ”

Miller said she has become increasingly upset over the civil war being waged by Croats and Serbs in the former Yugoslavian republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. She blames U.N. officials and European leaders, in particular, for failure to intervene in what she calls “Serbian aggression.”

So she wrote a protest message: “First the Holocaust, now ethnic cleansing--Shame on you world leaders.’ Then she set out to find a billboard near the Federal Building in Westwood where U.S. government officials would see it.

There were no open billboards in that area, however. So Miller spent the next month driving around Los Angeles and compiling a list of more than 60 other sign sites next to busy freeways and streets such as Sunset Boulevard.

At up to $15,000 each, those proved too expensive, however. Officials of Patrick Media Group gently urged her to check cheaper billboards closer to her San Pedro home.

Three were available, and Miller went out late one rainy afternoon to view them.

“One was in an industrial area and I didn’t like it,” she said. “Another was partly blocked by trees. The last one on 9th Street seemed the best. I had no idea it was across from the Croatian Hall.”

Miller paid $813 and had it painted. The sign went up this week--just hours before President Clinton signaled his willingness to commit U.S. military forces to peacekeeping duty in Bosnia if the warring factions call a truce.

Word of the billboard drew a quick rebuke from local Serbian leaders. They called the “ethnic cleansing” charge unfair.

“The Americans should not allow any kind of provocation,” said Blasko Paraklis of Alhambra, secretary of the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Western America. “The conflict and bloodshed has caused so much trouble over there. Why should there be hatred here?”

The sign is being applauded by local Croats, however. They said U.N. negotiations have plodded along while the conflict has raged--leaving more than 18,000 dead and creating 1 million refugees by some accounts.

“It’s a shame they can’t see this in Europe,” Croatia-born businessman Hrvoje Poljicak said, gazing up at the billboard.

Miller said it’s a shame that she ended up preaching, in effect, to the Croatian choir.

“It’s pure coincidence,” she said. “I’m not happy. Having it here is a disadvantage--I’d rather put it up on Wilshire Boulevard.

“But I had two choices: Do nothing, or do what I could.”