A Bosnian Town Prepares for Next Wave of Refugees : Balkans: There is resignation--and anger--in Zenica as it labors to accommodate expected Muslim exiles from ‘safe area’ of Zepa.

More than 60 refugee centers are spread like unsightly stains across an achingly beautiful countryside of rolling hills, a swimming-hole kind of river and picture-book haystacks around this mostly Muslim city in central Bosnia.

On Thursday, Zenica labored to ready a new generation of centers for a new generation of dispossessed from a war it knows too well.

There was resignation--and anger--as this city awaited new refugees driven by Serbs from Zepa, a U.N.-designated “safe area” for Bosnian Muslims.

“We have been sold like cattle,” said city refugee chief Sabrija Imamovic as he supervised preparations for 500 Muslims in an unused downtown movie house. A school was also readied; outside of town, Turkish U.N. troops have begun putting up a tent city.

Zepa is the second Muslim safe area to be assaulted by Bosnian Serbs in little more than a week.

“Everyone promised to defend us and no one did anything,” said Imamovic, whose remarks were echoed in conversations with other residents of this old steel town of 150,000 on the banks of the Bosna River.

Leaders of the United Nations, Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United States are not the most popular figures here just now. Indeed, drivers say that trucks painted in the United Nations’ white-and-blue have been the targets of rocks on the winding highways through the picturesque countryside north of here. Disgruntled Bosnian police on Thursday detained two British U.N. convoys outside the nearby city of Vitez, apparently to demonstrate their anger at the fall of Zepa. Local reporters said one of the convoys was apparently bound for the town of Kladanj to pick up Zepa refugees.

The Bosnian government on Thursday disputed Serb claims to have captured Zepa, but aid officials here said they had been warned to expect 7,000 to 8,000 civilian refugees within 48 hours.

Civilians trucked out of the larger enclave of Srebrenica, after it fell last week, brought tales of atrocities committed by victorious Bosnian Serbs who winnowed out fighting-age men and took them away for interrogation. Thousands of them are still missing.

Expecting that the nationalist Serbs would again separate the sexes in Zepa, aid officials assumed most of the newcomer refugees will again be women and children. “Nutrition was not a problem with the Srebrenica refugees, but we found that only a very small percentage of the children have been immunized, so we will be particularly alert to the dangers of an epidemic--measles, for example--with the arrivals from Zepa,” said Freda Pyles of the International Medical Corps, a non-governmental aid group.

After a day of confusing, conflicting priorities Thursday, it was unclear whether the latest refugees would come directly to Zenica or would be taken first to the city of Tuzla, to the northeast. The United Nations hoped to move them directly to Zenica; the Bosnian government, though, favored an initial stop in Tuzla, where most of the international media are concentrated, aid officials here said.

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Over the past three years of often multi-sided ethnic violence, Zenica has become inured to refugees. “The three collective centers here will offer primary care for a few days, after which people will be distributed to other centers in the area,” said David Robison of the International Rescue Committee, a New York-based agency helping refugees here.

At present, there are about 14,000 refugees in Zenica in 35 centers--many of them individual buildings--and 25 more in neighboring villages. The city’s population also has swelled by nearly one-third as Bosnians fleeing violence and insecurity elsewhere have moved in with relatives and friends.

Anticipating more population pressures to come, city officials are resorting to Communist-era tactics of telling families with large apartments that they will have to share their space, Zenica residents say.

Among the millions displaced by accelerating ethnic violence in the Balkans, about 21,000 new refugees from Srebrenica are being cared for at Tuzla, U.N. officials say, and the anticipated arrivals can also be accommodated by a burgeoning international relief effort.

“In the context of humanitarian assistance, the situation is still manageable. Resources and structures are coming together,” said Roy Williams of the International Rescue Committee.

The energy and commitment of the international community are lost on Bosnians like city refugee chief Imamovic, who was struggling Thursday for some paint and enough money to replace at least some of the broken windows at the derelict theater. With volunteers listlessly pushing mops across filthy floors, the Kino Theater groaned with old age and neglect.

“The United Nations is very big with promises, but, in the end, we are left alone. For paint, for glass, for guns . . . we are better off on our own,” said Imamovic. “The way things are now, the one thing we can know for certain is that the Zepa refugees will not be the last ones having to flee.”