Bosnia’s Leading Serb Rebels Said to OK Peace Pact : Balkans: Separatists were seen as threat to deal. But in secret meeting, Serbia’s President Milosevic reportedly orders hard-liners to accept U.S.-brokered accord.

Basking in the glow of a newly sanction-free Serbia, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic turned up the pressure on his Bosnian Serb allies Thursday and reportedly secured their grudging acceptance of the U.S.-brokered Balkan peace agreement.

Milosevic summoned Bosnian Serb leaders to a secret meeting at an estate outside Belgrade, where it was believed that the president ordered compliance.

After the meeting, Tanjug, the Yugoslav state news agency, reported that the Bosnian Serb chieftains, including hard-line leader Radovan Karadzic, accepted the plan despite serious objections.

The Serbian separatists were emerging as potentially deal-breaking holdouts by refusing to accept an accord that gives them their own mini-state but sacrifices their claim to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, an emotion-charged symbol for both sides in the war.

Resistance by the Bosnian Serbs to the peace accord would seriously undermine the deal and stall the deployment of 60,000 peacekeeping troops from the United States, its NATO allies and 10 other countries.

Tanjug said Milosevic agreed to address the Bosnian Serbs’ objections in further negotiations, though it was not clear what shape such talks would take. It has been previously reported that Karadzic might be spared prosecution on war crime charges if he accepted the Ohio agreement and stepped down. He has been twice indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal at The Hague for alleged atrocities committed by the Bosnian Serbs during the 3 1/2-year war.

The leader of the Bosnian Serbs’ self-declared parliament, Momcilo Krajisnik, who left the Dayton, Ohio, negotiations blasting the agreement as treason, also attended the session with Milosevic, Tanjug said.

There was no immediate statement from the Bosnian Serb leadership, nor was there independent confirmation of the new position.

If true, the Bosnian Serbs’ acceptance would remove a troublesome obstacle that could have endangered NATO’s U.S. and allied soldiers, who will make up most of the peacekeeping force.

The announcement from Tanjug gave encouragement to President Clinton’s drive to overcome congressional opposition to the deployment of an estimated 23,000 U.S. troops in the peacekeeping force, Administration officials said in Washington.

Diplomats in Sarajevo had expressed fears earlier that the Bosnian Serbs might attack U.N. personnel already there to try to push Congress--which is already reluctant to take part in a new European venture--into refusing to send the promised U.S. troops.

For Milosevic, the peace deal is of utmost importance because, in exchange for his role in making the agreement happen, international economic sanctions imposed against the rump Yugoslavia three years ago have been suspended.

The punitive measures, originally imposed because of Belgrade’s role in fomenting war, could be reinstated, however, if the agreement is not signed at a ceremony next month or if it is otherwise violated by the rebel Serbs.

In addition, Milosevic repeatedly assured U.S. officials that he could ensure full Serbian adherence to terms of the accord--in Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as in Serbia itself--and he has also pledged to remove Karadzic from power.

Milosevic probably argued to the Bosnian Serbs that they would no longer receive military, logistic or political support from Belgrade, all of which have continued despite an official ban.

Combined with government mismanagement, the sanctions crippled the rump Yugoslav economy. Unemployment soared, factories closed and a once-prosperous middle class virtually disappeared.

Though removal of the sanctions will not cure all of these ills, it will give a boost to business and, Milosevic believes, begin to restore pariah Yugoslavia to the international fold.

The U.N. Security Council late Wednesday voted to suspend the sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro--which together comprise Yugoslavia--and to lift a weapons embargo in honor of the peace pact.

Newspaper headlines and television commentators Thursday celebrated the end of sanctions, which had also given rise to a thriving black market supplying everything from gasoline to imported cigarettes through vendors on street corners and sidewalks.

Two days after it was initialed, the peace deal continues to inspire both celebration and skepticism in the capitals of the former Yugoslav republic, as war-weary people struggle to understand what they have lost and what they have gained.

In Zagreb, the Croatian capital, state-controlled television has regularly rebroadcast President Franjo Tudjman’s speech from the Dayton ceremony, and editorial commentators told Croatians that they could expect a quick return of tourists and a flood of foreign investment.

There were voices of protest, however, especially from opposition politicians and refugees who say they cannot trust their Serbian enemies.

In Sarajevo, gunfire and explosions rang out overnight near Grbavica, a Serb-controlled suburb that will revert to Muslim-Croat government control under the peace pact.

Several officials from the Serb-held suburbs bitterly complained that they could never accept a treaty that sacrifices their homes.

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, who was greeted by hundreds of cheering followers when he returned to Sarajevo on Wednesday, warned Serbs that his Muslim-led government will resume war--better armed thanks to the suspension of the arms embargo--if the Serbs violate the agreement.

“In case they [the Serbs] fully reject the plan, we will after some reasonable period of waiting consider it invalid,” Izetbegovic said on state television.

He indicated two to three months was a “reasonable” period of time to give the Serbs.

Noting that the U.N. arms embargo against the Bosnian government has been eased, he warned that, if the peace deal failed, “it is left to us to solve this militarily.”

In Moscow, Russia welcomed the end of U.N. economic sanctions against the rump Yugoslavia and assigned a delegation to go there next month to revive two-way trade.

Russian contracts to sell natural gas to Belgrade had been frozen by the sanctions.

Moscow abstained on the U.N. Security Council’s decision Wednesday to lift an arms embargo against all former Yugoslav republics.

A spokesman for President Boris N. Yeltsin said Russia wanted the quantity of arms in the region reduced, not increased.

“The reason behind this was Russia’s great responsibility for the fate of the Balkans and, at the same time, serious concern over the dangerous consequences of possible uncontrolled development of events in this region,” said Sergei Medvedev, the spokesman.

While welcoming the peace accord reached in Dayton, Russian officials have emphasized the difficulties of implementing it.

Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, returning to Moscow from Dayton, said Russia still hopes to host a Moscow summit of the presidents of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia like the one that was postponed last month when Yeltsin fell ill.

“All sides are interested in holding such a conference,” Ivanov said. “The peace process is just beginning and . . . at some stage there should be a meeting in Moscow.”

Times staff writer Richard Boudreaux in Moscow contributed to this report.