Serbs Proclaim a New Independent State in Yugoslav Republic

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — Serbs proclaimed their own state in Bosnia-Herzegovina on Thursday, raising fears of bloodshed there, but Serbia’s leader bolstered a truce in Croatia by throwing his weight behind U.N. peace efforts.

“For the first time, it does look as if the cease-fire . . . will hold. And that is very good news,” said Lord Carrington, chairman of the European Community’s peace conference on Yugoslavia.

Carrington and leaders from Yugoslavia’s six republics resumed peace talks in Brussels after a monthlong recess.

Carrington said he is pleased that Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic is reining in ultra-nationalist Serbs in western Croatia’s Krajina region.

Milosevic, who had initially opposed international intervention to end the war in Croatia, now supports U.N. peace plans and told Serbian TV: “We can view this conference . . . with greater optimism. For the first time . . . a realistic cease-fire has been achieved.”

On Wednesday, he criticized his former protege, Milan Babic, an ethnic Serb leader who has opposed deploying peacekeepers in the Krajina.

Croatia was reported quiet for a sixth day as the Croatian guard, the Serb-dominated federal army and Serb militants generally honored the most successful truce since Croatia and Slovenia declared independence June 25.

But the declaration of an independent Serb republic in Bosnia alarmed observers in the central republic, populated by Slavic Muslims, Orthodox Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats.

Muslims make up the largest group in Bosnia, 40% of its 4.2 million people. Serbs are almost as numerous, at 33%, and Croats make up 17%.

Bosnia has applied to the European Community for recognition as an independent nation. That led Serbs--who want to remain in a smaller, Serbia-dominated Yugoslavia--to demand separation from Bosnia.

The Yugoslav news agency Tanjug said the militant Bosnian Serbs declared Sarajevo, a predominantly Muslim city, the capital of their newly proclaimed Serbian state. The new republic’s borders were undefined.

Bosnia’s government, dominated by Muslims and Croats opposed to giving up the republic’s Serb-inhabited areas, did not react immediately.

Serbs have carved out regions of Croatia with the support of Milosevic, leading to fierce combat with Croatia’s government, which refuses to surrender territory.

But faced with an increasingly war-weary population and fears that the conflict could spread to Bosnia, Milosevic agreed to the U.N. peace plan last week.