BALKANS: President insists 12,000 peacekeepers must be gone by July. That's left many people nearly paralyzed with fear.

(by Tracy Wilkinson)

.....Croatia has announced that it is expelling the 12,000 U.N. peacekeepers who have been the buffer between Croatian forces and their foes, the Serbs, who control nearly a third of national territory.

The Serbian insurgents took the land in the 1991 Serb-Croat war after Croatia declared its independence from what was then the Serb-dominated Yugoslav federation. An estimated 10,000 people were killed, and tens of thousands, were driven from their homes.

The way the Croats see it, the U.N. mission was to help oversee return of the land to Croatian control. But that has not happened, the Serbs have effectively set up their own state within a state, and the Croatian government has lost patience. Time's up.

In a high-stakes gamble that alarmed the international community but played to domestic nationalism, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman said the United Nations must be gone by the end of June.

Although Tudjman insists that he wants "peaceful re-integration" of the disputed areas, his move was widely seen as Croatia clearing the way to retake the land by force.

If war erupts again, Karlovac, 35 miles south of the capital, Zagreb, will once again be on the front line. It was heavily bombed during the battles of 1991, when the Serbs, backed by the Yugoslav army, easily overpowered the lesser armed Croats.

.......The mistrust is, of course, mutual. The Serbs believe they are entitled to self-rule in their ancestral homes along the long, rural stretch of Croatia known as the Krajina, which borders on Bosnia. Their forebears were first settled there as a barrier against advancing Turks hundreds of years ago, and the reputation they earned as dedicated fighters continues today. The Serbs, recalling the massacre of their people by Croats who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, do not want to be ruled by today's Croats. With the U.N. pullout seemingly imminent, the Serbs are convinced that the Croatian army is preparing to attack them, and they are ready to fight back. In perhaps a final blow, the Serbs in January rejected a political plan that would have given them partial political autonomy in the Krajina.

In deciding to expel the United Nations, Tudjman capitalized on widespread anger among many Croats who fault the international peacekeepers for their failure to restore the seized land. And he is relying on his wholly unproven belief that the Croatian army, which has spent the last three years rearming and expanding, will be able to make short work of the Serbs. Although popular at home, the move immediately cost Croatia in the world community. The United States suspended plants to hold joint military training operations, sources say, and millions of dollars in loans from international lending agencies are now in jeopardy. Tudjman has made similar threats to oust the United Nations and then reconsidered. But diplomats say he is holding fast this time, and he has received near unanimous backing from the Croatian Parliament. "The Parliament rejects all pressures on Croatia aimed at changing its decision," legislators said in a statement. U.N. officials warn that their disappearance will lead to a rapid deterio

ration in the former Yugoslav federation and to broader warfare. "It would be like living in a town of wooden houses without a fire brigade," U.N. spkesman Michael Williams said.

Expelling the United Nations from Croatia also has far-reaching and ominous implications for Bosnia, U.N. official say. In addiction to th U.N. troops assigned to monitoring the Serb-Croat dispute, headquarters for the entire U.N. Balkans mission and most logistics support for the Bosnian operation are based in Croatia.

Diplomats say that Tudjman, the first president of Croatia since it became an independent country, is seeking to secure his place in history and wants to go down on record as the father of modern, unified Croatia. And the world focus on Bosnia, virtually ignoring Croatia, has angered him, analysts say. Tudjman has said he believes he can avoid wider war by securing diplomatic recognition from Slobodan Milosevic, the powerful president of Yugoslavia whose vision of a Greater Serbia was the original inspiration for the Krajina Serbs to rebel against Croatian rule. But Milosevic mastermind of the ethnic warfare tha ha reduced the former Yugoslav federation to a hodgepodge of killing fields, has to weigh loyalty to his Serbian brethen against his desire to gain international acceptance and have sanctions that the world placed against the rump Yugoslavia lifted by keeping out of new wars. Milosevic has so far refused to recognize Croatia unless sanctions are lifted first. "Tudjman is gambling on the fact that Bel

grade (the Serbian Capital) wants an end to the sanctions and wants the international community off of its back," a European diplomat said. "But if Milosevic fails to come to the aid of his fellow Serbs, he could have domestic problems. He could be pushed from power. He has his own delicate balancing act". Even if Milosevic formally stays out of a renewed Croat-Serb war, Bosnians Serbs - through their leader, Radovan Karadzic - have vowed to fight alongside Croatian Serbs. And so while the world ponders such geopolitical equations of war and peace, the people of Karlovac simply wait.