Croats Claim Big Advances; Serbs Deny It

Invading its breakaway Krajina region in an all-out assault, Croatia triggered international protest and stiff resistance from rebel Serbs on Friday in what is shaping up to be the biggest land battle in Europe since World War II.

The Croats, attacking with tanks and mechanized vehicles behind artillery barrages, reported major gains. The Serbs, however, denied them. The United Nations reported “cautious ground advances” but said it did not have enough information to confirm the Croatian claims.

This Croatian capital reacted calmly to war Friday, with shops and businesses operating normally on a hot summer’s day. But beginning in the late afternoon, air raid sirens sounded repeatedly.

The Croatian Defense Ministry said a Serbian rocket landed in a Zagreb suburb Friday night, but there were no reports of damage or any independent confirmation. The United States is among a number of countries urging that its citizens leave Croatia, where about 1,000 U.S. citizens live.

Despite international appeals for restraint, the Croatian advance in Krajina targeted civilian population centers and lightly armed international peacekeepers, the United Nations charged.

One Danish U.N. peacekeeper was killed and two Polish soldiers were wounded by Croatian tank fire, the United Nations said. In other incidents, a Czech command post was strafed by two Croatian jets; some observation posts were surrounded by mines, and communications were lost with more than 100 others, according to Maj. Rita Le Cage of the United Nations.

About 100 blue-helmeted peacekeepers have been captured by advancing Croatian troops, and their whereabouts were unknown Friday night, a U.N. spokesman said. The missing soldiers included about 70 Poles and 15 Canadians, the United Nations said.

“We do not know where all our soldiers are,” said Col. Andrew Leslie, the U.N. chief of staff in the Krajina capital of Knin.

The orange-roofed town, the administrative capital of Croatian Serbs who broke away from Croatia in 1991, was a particular target of Croatian fury from the instant the invasion began at dawn Friday.

By late afternoon Friday, Leslie said, more than 1,500 artillery rounds had fallen on Knin, inflicting great damage, fires and uncounted civilian casualties. Leslie reported a “serious loss of life” around Knin.

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The United States and the United Nations voiced strong protest at the Croatian lack of restraint and the targeting of peacekeepers.

In Washington, President Clinton expressed fears that the new offensive might widen the war in the Balkans and urged the Croats to “exercise restraint,” but, conspicuously, he did not condemn the action outright.

After a meeting early Friday between Clinton and Anthony Lake, his national security adviser, the White House sent messages to all the warring sides urging them to return to the bargaining table.

State Department spokesman David Johnson called on the combatants to “respect the safety and rights of civilians, POWs and, especially, [U.N.] peacekeepers.” He expressed the United States’ regret at the killing of the Danish peacekeeper and the wounding of the two Poles.

But both Clinton and Johnson stopped well short of suggesting that the Croatian troops give back any of the territory they have retaken. “I think that the language I’d prefer to use is ‘to urge restraint,’ ” Johnson said.

The Clinton Administration initially supported Croatia’s efforts to block the Bosnian Serbs from taking over the U.N.-designated “safe area” of Bihac in northwestern Bosnia-Herzegovina, but American officials became more and more apprehensive as the offensive there continued, fearing that it might widen the war and draw Serbia into the fighting as well.

“The Croatian offensive originally was launched in response to the Serb attack on Bihac,” Clinton said, “and it has apparently relieved a lot of pressure on Bihac. But because it was so comprehensive, it runs the risk of a wider war.”

Defense Secretary William J. Perry said the situation is now at a crossroads at which the Croatian offensive either could propel all sides into negotiating peace or could broaden the war.

European Union peace mediator Carl Bildt said the Krajina offensive “will cast a long shadow over Croatia for a long time to come. Especially appalling is the shelling of the civilian population.”

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The Croatian Serbs have a powerful arsenal and have regularly harassed Croatian cities with artillery fire since a cease-fire was declared in January, 1992, but Knin is not a military site, Lt. Gen. Bernard Janvier, the commander of U.N. forces in the Balkans, told reporters here Friday.

In all, the battle for Krajina could involve 150,000 troops on a continent where large armies have not clashed for half a century. About 100,000 Croatian troops were in attack positions during the invasion Friday against an estimated 50,000 rebel Serbs, the United Nations estimates.

Croatian leaders ordered the attack despite strong signals from rebel Serb leaders to peace envoys in recent days that they are willing to accept Croatian President Franjo Tudjman’s demands for their re-integration into Croatia.

The last of three peace efforts collapsed late Thursday when Peter W. Galbraith--the U.S. ambassador to Croatia, who had been relaying Serbian concessions--was summoned to the Foreign Ministry and handed a letter from Tudjman to Clinton explaining Croatia’s reason for the impending invasion.

Galbraith, accompanied by the German ambassador to Croatia, expressed great disappointment that Zagreb had resorted to violence but pleaded for restraint, diplomatic sources said.

Small deployments of U.N. troops at observation posts along Croatia’s cease-fire line--typically seven soldiers per post--were ordered to hold their ground. With communications out to many outposts, Le Cage said at least 14 had been overrun or abandoned under fire from Croatian forces. The slain Dane was targeted by a tank when he refused demands to abandon his post, Le Cage said.

The loss of communications with the outposts, and the movement of attacking forces beyond most of the stations scattered along the cease-fire line, added to the fog of war Friday. “Once they have passed lines, we are basically blind,” Le Cage said.

Croatian forces claimed to have pierced Serbian defenses in about 30 places along several hundred miles of frontier. The United Nations said the Croats appeared to be using three avenues of attack, with Knin as the focus of the invasion.

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One powerful force of 20 main battle tanks accompanied by infantry in armored personnel carriers jumped off from the town of Gospic, north of Knin, U.N. analysts said. Its initial progress was good, they said, but it seemed to have stalled in the face of stiff opposition. “What we have noted is that there has been no second-wave attack,” Le Cage said.

Farther north, Croatia claimed the capture of Petrinja, a small town southeast of Zagreb that is the gateway to a region where missile and rocket batteries that threaten Zagreb and other Croatian cities are based. Some shelling of border cities on the Croatian side of the frontier was reported Friday, with damage reported at Karlovac, southwest of Zagreb. One person was killed and an oil refinery was damaged at Sisak, near Petrinja.

Croatian Radio reported that Serbs launched early morning artillery attacks on two eastern Croatian towns today. The radio said the rebels pounded the towns of Vinkovci and Osijek. It quoted local officials as saying that more than 100 heavy artillery shells had fallen on Vinkovci in less than an hour.

Radio reports from Knin quoted a rebel Serb military commander as saying that the Croatian assault Friday had been contained. “Croatian artillery is destroying everything in its wake, shelling primarily civilian facilities in Knin, Petrinja, Tselingrad and other towns,” a Krajina Serb statement said.

Knin was deserted, its people in shelters, its houses burning. Smoke from artillery battles wreathed surrounding hills. Television showed major fires in the town center.

Flush with the early advances of their troops, Croatian government officials Friday predicted a quick end to the fighting. But U.N. analysts were less sanguine. In their estimate, Croatia has sufficient strength to conquer and hold land in the more or less flat north and south of the ear-lobe-shaped region that makes up 17% of Croatian national territory.

“The mountainous center, though, is perfect guerrilla country,” one U.N. analyst said.

Lamenting the outbreak of a new and potentially contagious Balkan war, U.N. special envoy Yasushi Akashi said Tudjman told him of the dawn invasion about 3:20 a.m. Friday.

The attack, Akashi told reporters, short-circuited diplomacy just when it seemed most promising. Akashi himself had won Krajina concessions on a visit to Knin last weekend. Croatia rejected them.

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Meeting with Krajina’s “foreign minister” in the Serbian capital of Belgrade on Wednesday, Galbraith also won agreement on a list of Croatian demands. So did negotiators at U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Geneva on Thursday.

“The Krajina Serbs had substantially met Croatian conditions. Croatia could have achieved what it sought without war,” Galbraith said Friday.

European diplomats speculated that the momentum of Croatia’s mobilization and its good standing in the international community after decisively cutting off the Serbian attack on Bihac played roles in the decision to attack.

The initial invasion’s toll on civilians and U.N. peacekeepers, though, may cost Croatia its good image--the new refugees fleeing ethnic hatred along dusty country roads of the former Yugoslav federation will be dispirited Serbs this time, not Muslims or Croats.

Times staff writer Art Pine in Washington contributed to this report.