Defying West, Bosnian Muslim Warlord Pushes Followers Toward Croatia : Balkans: Defeated by government, Fikret Abdic continues to foment revolt. Aid workers fear he may provoke a deadly faceoff.

Defeated Muslim warlord Fikret Abdic herded thousands more of his followers into a dangerous no-man’s-land between Serbian rebels and Croatian forces Saturday while Western mediators vainly sought to persuade him to tell his people to return to their Bosnian homes.

The appeals of U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith and the U.N. civilian affairs chief for the Balkans, Sergio de Mello, appeared to fall on deaf ears as Abdic continued to pressure more than 30,000 displaced Muslims from the Bihac region to march on armed barricades.

Croatian police in riot gear have been barring the throngs of Abdic supporters from crossing into government-held territory for a week, and humanitarian aid workers fear a deadly confrontation could break out.

At least 6,000 refugees who had been camped in a field just across the Bosnian border in this Serb-held region of Croatia were hustled onto buses provided by Abdic early Saturday and taken to the crossing point at Turanj, an abandoned village in the mined territory sandwiched between Serbian rebels and Croatian forces.

Abdic lieutenants said they were also planning to move thousands more refugees from a makeshift camp here to the Turanj crossing.

One senior U.N. official said he feared Abdic was deliberately trying to provoke a violent confrontation at Turanj “to discredit both the Bosnian and Croatian governments.”

Croatia, which already shelters 400,000 Bosnian refugees, has refused to grant asylum to the Abdic supporters. They began fleeing en masse two weeks ago as his yearlong effort to conquer the Bihac pocket for his personal fiefdom was being quashed by Bosnian government forces.

The Muslim rebels also have found no welcome among the Serbian gunmen who occupy all Croatian and Bosnian territory surrounding the Bihac pocket.

That leaves the refugees with two choices: to remain packed on a narrow roadway at Turanj and in makeshift refugee camps without toilets or shelter, or to accept U.N. and Bosnian government assurances that they will not face retribution if they choose to return home.

The Bosnian government has offered amnesty to all Abdic supporters, and U.N. forces in the Bihac pocket have promised to monitor their safety.

“We said as clearly as possible that the best solution for these people is to return home, that there is no prospect of third countries taking them in,” Galbraith said after he and De Mello took Abdic aside to inform him of his limited options.

Galbraith described conditions at Turanj as “a mini-Auschwitz” and said he was sure the refugees would leave if Abdic told them to do so.

Abdic’s power over the refugees was obvious when he addressed them in this Serb-held village, where at least 14,000 are crammed into the sheds of an abandoned chicken farm that was part of Abdic’s prewar food-processing empire.

“Babo! Babo! Babo!” cheered the mobs of Abdic supporters, calling him by an affectionate diminutive of father.

“He is going to take us to Western Europe, where there is peace,” insisted Mehmet Delic, who worked for Abdic in his stronghold of Velika Kladusa for more than three decades. “We all would rather go home, but not without our Babo.”

Some refugees, especially women with children, seemed eager to believe the diplomats’ message that they could return home in safety. But they immediately switched to adulation of Abdic whenever one of his “community leaders” came within earshot.

“We would have starved without Babo. We are nothing without him,” a young mother of three, Rasima Selimanovic, recited with practiced conviction.

Abdic, vanquished by the Muslim-led Bosnian army after the insurgency, has refused to surrender or cease the propaganda barrage used to convince his followers that Bosnian troops will cut their throats if they return home.

While the Sarajevo government has promised amnesty to Abdic fighters and civilians, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic has vowed to put Abdic himself on trial for war crimes.

With no hope of recovering his power base peacefully, Abdic has been trying to muster the displaced for another armed assault on the Bosnian forces who now control the entire Bihac pocket, U.N. officers said.

Whether Western diplomats succeed in convincing the refugees that they can return home safely may provide a litmus test for the future of other war-torn regions of the Balkans.

If they fail to reconcile Muslims loyal to Abdic with Muslims who support the Sarajevo government in one of the few regions where refugees are being officially encouraged to return home, aid workers and diplomats see little hope of convincing other divided peoples in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia that they can learn to live together again.

“This should be the easy part,” one official commented privately, acknowledging that the prospects for immediate success were dim.