Bosnia Serb Leader Warns on Dangers of Peace Plan : Balkans: The Muslim-Croatian Parliament backs the international proposal that would split the country.

As Bosnian Serb officials met Monday in their mountain stronghold of Pale to debate whether to accept an international peace plan to divide Bosnia-Herzegovina among the warring parties, their leader, Radovan Karadzic, warned that the take-it-or-else proposal could be disastrous for the whole Serbian nation.

In his opening address to the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb assembly, Karadzic denounced the peace plan, saying that “this was now or never for the whole Serbian nation.”

Meantime, in Sarajevo, the rival Bosnian Parliament--made up of Muslims and Croats--endorsed the peace proposal, which would give them 51% of Bosnia, leaving Serbs with the rest. A separate, Muslim Parliament backed the plan earlier Monday.

But the Bosnian Serbs, who in more than two years of war have captured more than 70% of Bosnia, have indicated they are unwilling to relinquish their military gains. Bosnian Serb forces, backed by the Yugoslav army, launched their war against Bosnian independence in April, 1992, declaring that they hoped to join with their Serbian kin in the Balkans to create a Greater Serbia.

“If we reject the plan, we must prepare ourselves to reject all attacks by our enemies, but also to move into enemy territory in the shortest possible time to completely and utterly defeat our foes,” Karadzic told the Bosnian Serbs.

He added that if they rebuff international peace efforts, “we are threatened with the continuation of the war in far more difficult circumstances for us in which Muslims would be better-armed. There will be a battle for life and death. We will have blood, sweat and tears and we will be alone in the world.”

Indeed, the powerful nations that put forward the present plan--dubbed the “last chance for peace”--have told all the Bosnian warring parties they will face punitive international steps if they reject this latest effort to end the war, which has claimed about 200,000 lives.

The United Nations already has imposed some sanctions in the Balkans, especially against the rump Yugoslavia, now made up of the republics of Serbia and Montenegro. The United States, Russia, Germany, France and Britain have said the Bosnian Serbs would see even tougher measures if they rejected the latest peace plan.

The Muslim-led Bosnian government also would have been subject to further international steps had its president, Alija Izetbegovic, not recommended that his assembly back the plan--”not because it is good or will end the war” but because it would give the Muslim-led government troops a better chance to “end the war successfully,” he said. The lawmakers agreed, with only 17 of 160 deputies in the Sarajevo Parliament rejecting the plan.

The United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners have indicated that if the Bosnian Serbs balk at the peace proposal, the West may be prepared to lift its weapons embargo on the Muslim-Croatian alliance and give it logistics support in its attempt to recapture Serb-held territory.

As for Karadzic, he reportedly was summoned here on the eve of his session with other Bosnian Serbs for a last-ditch effort by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to persuade his former proteges to endorse the peace plan. Milosevic wants to get international sanctions against the rump Yugoslavia lifted. But this will not happen as long as the Bosnian war drags on and his regime supports Karadzic.

But in a clear indication that the rift between Karadzic and his erstwhile mentor is widening, Bosnian Serb officials scorned the peace plan Monday.

“We want more than we have now,” said Dragan Milanovic, a Bosnian Serb official. “We want more (land) than we hold now. We cannot live like this. . . . The Muslims would hold too much under the plan.”

Milan Ninkovic, another Bosnian Serb, said he and other officials might seek a referendum on the peace plan--a delaying tactic Karadzic has been criticized for suggesting before in response to other peace plans.

But “if the world does not accept this (referendum), the Serbs are ready for a big war,” Ninkovic said.