Zagreb

ZAGREB, Yugoslavia -- Federal army tanks battered Croatia's easternmost garrisons with shellfire, and warplanes struck its Adriatic coastline yesterday as the army launched the civil war's broadest and harshest assault against the secessionist republic.Croatian officials appealed to Yugoslav military leaders in Belgrade twice for a truce in a conflict that is threatening to escalate beyond control, but there was no public response, suggesting that the federal authorities are bent on expanding territorial control in a weakened Croatia.

The International Pier at Baltimore-Washington International Airport was awash in blue yesterday as nearly 400 military athletes and coaches sporting blue USA shirts and toting Reebok bags got ready to board a 747 to Croatia for the second World Military Games in Zagreb.USA crew shirts and tan shorts aside, the athletes looked completely different from one angle: their shoes. The foot coverings that advertisers would have us believe are an athlete's most valuable tool varied from sneakers to sandals to boots.

ZAGREB, Yugoslavia -- This city, capital of the secessionist Croatian republic, was under fierce attack by the Yugoslav army and air force yesterday, hours after federal military leaders signed another cease-fire brokered by the European Community.Yugoslav air force planes could be heard streaking through the darkness, strafing the blacked-out city below, and the ground shook with the explosions of artillery shells fired into the city center from Yugoslav army bases on the outskirts.Helicopters, presumably carrying federal troops, were seen flying over the city in what appeared to be a drive to knock out the local television transmitter.

MARIJA BISTRICA, Croatia -- Hailing the World War II archbishop of Zagreb as a martyr to "the atrocities of the Communist system," Pope John Paul II beatified him yesterday.Beatification is the final step before sainthood. But by paying such homage to Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, who was imprisoned by the Tito regime as a Nazi collaborator, the pope stepped into one of the most divisive Serbo-Croatian disputes in the embattled regions of the former Yugoslavia.Stepinac is a national hero to millions of Roman Catholic Croats, and to Croatia's nationalist president, Franjo Tudjman.

After a day of air raid sirens that warned of bombing attacks on the Croatian capital, Zagreb, Zlatko Barovic feared that the bombardment had begun as he was stuck in morning rush hour traffic Monday on a one-lane bridge, preparing to leave the country."

KNIN, Croatia -- As capital cities go, Knin isn't much to look at -- a dreary shuffling town of barking dogs and drying laundry. The architecture is drab chockablock. The surrounding mountains seem more suited to rattlesnakes than trees. And no man feels at home without a gun, preferably an automatic weapon, although just about any firearm will do after a few shots of the local plum brandy.But for anyone seeking to understand the hard-bitten ethnic nationalism at the core of Balkan strife, the place to go is Knin, capital of the self-declared Republic of the Serbian Krajina.

A world-famous organist will play two concerts in Baltimore this weekend -- but massacres rather than music drew her to America from war-torn Yugoslavia.Although she had stayed close to home and family this year, Ljerka Ocic-Turkulin said she came to the United States to try to win support for Croatia's struggle against Serbia for independence.Now, the 31-year-old classical organist hopes she'll be able to get home next week to her husband and 6-year-old daughter, her parents and other family in Zagreb, her family's home for 600 years.

ZAGREB, Croatia -- The final film credit rolled at Friday night's premiere of "Schindler's List," and all heads in Zagreb's packed European Theater turned toward the mezzanine, where Croatian President Franjo Tudjman sat stone-faced next to the film's Oscar-winning co-producer, Branko Lustig.Amid a round of subdued applause, Mr. Tudjman rose and embraced Mr. Lustig, a Croatian native and Auschwitz survivor. Coming from Mr. Tudjman, whose sensitivities regarding Jews in Croatia have been questioned, the gesture seemed to go beyond one of appreciation.

ZAGREB, Croatia -- Croatian army troops gunned down at least 70 Serbian civilians and burned every building in 11 villages in an organized and brutal application of "scorched earth" tactics, the United Nations charged yesterday.In a separate report alleging human rights abuses by Croats, a U.N. refugee official said nationalist gunmen rounded up 530 Muslims from the divided city of Mostar and expelled them across a dangerous no-man's land riddled with mines and corpses.The latest documented atrocities testified to the anarchy spreading across the Balkans as well as to the U.N. mission's inability to protect civilians from such barbarity.

UNREST IN BELGRADE, capital of Serbia, and Zagreb, capital of Croatia, undermines the strong men who brought wars to Yugoslavia. And since they agreed to the peace, it undermines that.Franjo Tudjman, president of Croatia, is 74 and was rushed to Walter Reed Hospital with what authorities in Washington called stomach cancer and in Zagreb called digestive problems. Then he went home to witness strikes for wages and against government suppression of the last independent radio station.Mr. Tudjman had quit as a general in Communist dictator Tito's Yugoslav army decades ago to pursue Croat nationalism and write revisionist history.

UNREST IN BELGRADE, capital of Serbia, and Zagreb, capital of Croatia, undermines the strong men who brought wars to Yugoslavia. And since they agreed to the peace, it undermines that.Franjo Tudjman, president of Croatia, is 74 and was rushed to Walter Reed Hospital with what authorities in Washington called stomach cancer and in Zagreb called digestive problems. Then he went home to witness strikes for wages and against government suppression of the last independent radio station.Mr. Tudjman had quit as a general in Communist dictator Tito's Yugoslav army decades ago to pursue Croat nationalism and write revisionist history.

TUZLA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The lights of the Prestige Caffe shine enticingly across the street from the main gate of the U.S. Army's headquarters in Bosnia.The gaily painted little restaurant is just another reminder that somewhere out there, in the outside world, there are fresh-cooked hamburgers for the ordering and ice-cold beer on tap."There's nothing there for us," says Sgt. Cameron Hunt, a sentry from Cypress, Calif., with a jerk of his head toward the Prestige and the pleasures beyond.

ON THE ROAD TO TUZLA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Budo, a 30-year-old soldier for the mostly Muslim army of the Bosnian government, sits on a guardrail and waits for a ride that may not come on a battered stretch of asphalt outside Zenica.His home is a dilapidated barracks with a muddy soccer field and a shredded barbed-wire fence. He has no idea whether his mother, father and sister are alive. All he owns is the green camouflage uniform on his back and the black combat boots on his feet."There was no winner in this war," he says.

Ajla Cico is a long way from her home in Sarajevo, but not from the memories."I was surrounded by bullets, by grenades, by mortar shells, by people dying," said Ajla (pronounced Eye-La), 17, a student since September at the serene St. Timothy's School campus in Stevenson.The posh boarding school has just 91 students, hailing from 16 states and 7 countries -- but only Ajla has experienced war.At St. Timothy's she is studying English as a foreign language, taking ballet and volunteering at the school library.

GRUBORI, Croatia -- Farm animals wander through this once-vibrant hamlet. Goats badly in need of milking stand on porches. Starving pigs root through trash. Donkeys bray in the gardens, while distressed sheep huddle against stone walls. The air is filled with constant wailing from hungry cats.When winter comes, the animals probably will die.Like the people.Grubori's human residents are all dead or departed. Six were killed late last month in a massacre that is being shrugged off in Croatia as one of war's mishaps.

KNIN, Croatia -- As capital cities go, Knin isn't much to look at -- a dreary shuffling town of barking dogs and drying laundry. The architecture is drab chockablock. The surrounding mountains seem more suited to rattlesnakes than trees. And no man feels at home without a gun, preferably an automatic weapon, although just about any firearm will do after a few shots of the local plum brandy.But for anyone seeking to understand the hard-bitten ethnic nationalism at the core of Balkan strife, the place to go is Knin, capital of the self-declared Republic of the Serbian Krajina.

ZAGREB, Croatia -- Pope John Paul II climaxed his first visit to the former Yugoslavian federation yesterday amid the adulation of hundreds of thousands of followers and sobering new calls for Balkan peace.The 74-year-old pontiff was strong-voiced at a three-hour Mass in this capital of predominantly Roman Catholic Croatia, but he maneuvered with difficulty on a right leg broken in April."The leg troubles him, but his spirits are very high," said the Rev. Roberto Tucci, a senior papal aide.

ZAGREB -- Today's visit of Pope John Paul II to Croatia has sent a deeply divisive message throughout the former Yugoslavia. It was something he had tried to avoid with his original plan to visit all three warring parties: the Croatian Roman Catholics, the Bosnian Muslims and the Serbian Orthodox.But the Serbian Orthodox Church rebuffed him. His security could not be guaranteed in Sarajevo. So he has ended up doing exactly what he did not intend: visiting just Croatia and raking up the kind of memories that have led to the present civil war.More than half a million Roman Catholic faithful from Croatia and abroad have bought tickets for his planned Mass in a Zagreb racetrack.

ZAGREB, Croatia -- Within the war fought by artillery and machine guns in the former Yugoslavia, there is a quieter, no less bitter struggle over churches, religious icons and works of art -- a cultural war that might not end long after the guns stop firing.The scenes from this war-within-a-war are as striking as the art objects that are the targets. Consider, for example, the militiamen who roamed house to house in the Bosnian city of Mostar with an art appraiser in tow, selecting their booty with discriminating taste.

ZAGREB, Croatia -- Pope John Paul II climaxed his first visit to the former Yugoslavian federation yesterday amid the adulation of hundreds of thousands of followers and sobering new calls for Balkan peace.The 74-year-old pontiff was strong-voiced at a three-hour Mass in this capital of predominantly Roman Catholic Croatia, but he maneuvered with difficulty on a right leg broken in April."The leg troubles him, but his spirits are very high," said the Rev. Roberto Tucci, a senior papal aide.