Serbs and Croats Agree to Low-Level Diplomatic Links : Balkans: Pacts are seen as a way of pressuring Bosnia’s Muslims to accept partitioning. They come as peace talks fail again.

Serbs and Croats agreed on Wednesday to establish low-level diplomatic relations as another round of peace talks among Bosnia-Herzegovina’s three warring parties ended without a settlement.

Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic blamed Bosnia’s Muslims for “blocking peace” and praised the accord with Zagreb as “significant progress.”

Under the modest agreement, signed by the foreign ministers of Yugoslavia and Croatia, the two countries will set up representative offices in their respective capitals by Feb. 15. Their Bosnian proxies signed similar declarations.

Croatian President Franjo Tudjman proclaimed the pacts, which cap months of improving personal relations between him and Milosevic, “a major step toward the normalization of relations between Croatia and Serbia.” The two countries severed ties after their six-month war that began in 1991.

Many view the accords, which do not extend to full diplomatic recognition, as an attempt to force Bosnia’s Muslim leaders into accepting a three-way partition of their war-torn republic.

“The Serbs may now pound Sarajevo (Bosnia’s capital) with artillery, trying to increase the pressure,” a Western diplomat said.

Milosevic is anxious to get his Muslim foes to sign a peace agreement in order to win the easing of international sanctions that have strangled Serbia’s economy.

The United Nations imposed the sanctions on Yugoslavia in 1992 for Belgrade’s role in the violent rending of Bosnia.

Bosnia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Muhamed Sacirbey, echoed the concern over the agreement, saying: “We hope this (agreement) does not signal a further alliance of war against our country.”

The Croatians should decide, he added, “whether they are a victim in this war or whether they are opportunistic aggressors.”

In Sarajevo on Wednesday, an American plane bringing food and medicine to the besieged capital was hit by gunfire--the second relief plane struck in two days, causing the United Nations to suspend aid flights to the city.

There were no injuries, and the plane landed safely in Sarajevo.

International mediator Lord Owen told reporters in Geneva that peace talks remained deadlocked on Muslim demands for the return of a string of towns throughout Bosnia.

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic has refused to accept the republic’s division along ethnic lines drawn during 22 months of war. He seeks to recover territory in eastern and western Bosnia that, once mostly Muslim, has been seized by Serbian forces.

He has rejected proposed maps that would give his government more than a third of Bosnian territory but would leave it with a virtually landlocked, geographically disjointed state.

Representatives of the warring communities have agreed to meet again on Feb. 10, Owen said, but will probably resume full-scale fighting “with no real prospects of coming together in a constructive frame of getting a peace agreement.”