Diplomats Fan Out to Keep Lid on Balkan Crisis : Bosnia: Russia’s foreign minister presses for protected havens. Mediator Lord Owen warns that Croat-Muslim clashes will widen the war.

European diplomats deployed across the former Yugoslav republics Tuesday in a determined effort to prevent the Balkan crisis from escalating after the latest Bosnian Serb rejection of a Western peace plan and new outbreaks of fighting between Croats and Muslims.

In meetings with Yugoslav and Serbian leaders here, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev pressed his proposal for isolating the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina by sealing its borders and for establishing protected havens for the republic’s embattled Muslims.

Kozyrev told reporters after talks here and in southwestern Bosnia that he has won some support for his call to deploy U.N. monitors to ensure that neither Serbia nor Croatia sends fuel and weapons to ethnic brothers.

The Russian envoy made clear that his country still backs the peace plan drafted by Lord Owen of the European Community and former U.N. mediator Cyrus R. Vance, even though their formula for calming Bosnia by dividing it has been repeatedly rejected by the republic’s defiant Serbs.

The Bosnian Serbs, who have already conquered and “ethnically cleansed” 70% of the republic, held a weekend referendum to show public attitudes toward the proposed settlement. An overwhelming “no” vote is expected once ballots are counted later this week.

In meetings with Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic, Montenegrin President Momir Bulatovic and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Kozyrev sought their consent for stationing U.N. monitors on their western borders to ensure adherence to Belgrade’s proclaimed cutoff of support for the rebel Bosnian Serbs.

Kozyrev indicated that the leaders wanted more details before promising compliance but said he won approval from Croatian President Franjo Tudjman during talks earlier in the day in the Bosnian Croat town of Medjugorje.

Asked about differences between American and Russian approaches to resolving the Yugoslav crisis, which led to cancellation of a U.N. Security Council meeting that Russia had called for Friday, Kozyrev played down the significance of any rift between the now-friendly Cold War adversaries.

“What is important is to consolidate our joint support for the Vance-Owen plan and find ways of building on it,” he told reporters here.

Washington has doubts about the prospects for success of the mediators’ proposal to divide Bosnia into 10 autonomous provinces and distribute them among Serbs, Muslims and Croats.

Kozyrev’s meeting with the Bosnian and Croatian presidents in the southwestern town of Medjugorje, as well as other talks held by European Community negotiator Lord Owen and his new partner, U.N. special envoy Thorvald Stoltenberg, had to be moved from their intended site in Mostar because of fierce fighting between Muslims and Croats.

Owen suggested that the persistent battles between the erstwhile allies were threatening to intensify and spread the war.

“The basic facts of life are that if Croats and Muslims cannot live together, side by side, there will not be a Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Owen said at Medjugorje.

“There is no way I can imagine the Muslim population will allow the partition of the country. They will fight. It will be like Lebanon,” Owen predicted.

The mediators reported that Muslim and Croatian leaders agreed to work together on a joint commission to deter future outbreaks of violence in three areas where fighting has been most intense--the cities of Travnik, Mostar and Zenica. The two sides also reportedly said they would try by today to enforce earlier truces that call for the withdrawal of troops and the release of civilians.

The deadly outbreak of Croatian offensives a month ago, just as Bosnian Serbs unleashed attacks against the last coveted eastern territories, has lent weight to longstanding suspicions that Serbs and Croats have conspired to carve up Bosnia between themselves and confine the larger Muslim community to three heavily damaged urban enclaves in Sarajevo, Bihac and Tuzla.

Meanwhile, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic said the war in his country could be over in two weeks if the West deployed troops to secure his front lines.

“We proposed the most urgent measure for ending the war--the deployment of monitors along the front line,” Karadzic told Bosnian Serb radio after talks with French Gen. Philippe Morillon, the commander of U.N. forces in Bosnia.

“If the international community agrees to this, we could end the war in two weeks.”

Karadzic and his hard-line military chief, Gen. Ratko Mladic, seemed to be seeking de facto recognition of their rogue republic by asking the world community to accept the territory they hold as rightfully acquired war spoils.

“Anyone who wants to deal with us has to understand that we will have one province, and it will be independent,” Mladic told reporters in Pale, near Sarajevo.

(Southland Edition) Bosnia Roundup

Developments Tuesday involving former Yugoslav republics:

* Battle for Mostar: Muslim and Croat leaders meet in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in a bid to defuse the 9-day-old battle for Mostar, the latest flash point frustrating efforts to end Bosnia’s year-old war.

* U.S. role: Secretary of State Warren Christopher tells Congress that the war in Bosnia is “a problem from hell” but that the United States will keep looking for solutions.

* Russia: Faced with international disarray over how to stop the war in Bosnia, Russia abandons efforts to convene a Security Council summit of foreign ministers to discuss the situation in the Balkans.

* Sarajevo: Gen. Philippe Morillon, commander of U.N. peacekeepers in Sarajevo, says after meeting with Gen. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander, that agreement may be near on demilitarizing Sarajevo. But there is no timetable.

* Cease-fire: Croats and rebel Serbs agree on a cease-fire in southwestern Croatia, where Croatian army forces broke a year-old truce in January in an attempt to regain lost territory.

Source: Times staff and wire reports