Yugoslavia Unleashes Its Forces on Slovenia : Balkans: Eight are killed in the breakaway republic. ‘In one word, there is war,’ its defense minister says.

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia —  Yugoslav army tanks and helicopters roared into breakaway Slovenia on Thursday, engaging defiant territorial forces in deadly clashes and sparking a potentially devastating civil war.

At least eight dead and dozens of other casualties were reported as violence flared throughout the tiny alpine republic that, along with Croatia, declared its independence from Yugoslavia on Tuesday.

“In one word, there is war in Slovenia,” Defense Minister Janez Jansa, clad in combat fatigues, somberly informed fellow Slovenes in a televised address.

Gunfire and explosions resounded at nightfall in normally placid Ljubljana, chasing frightened pedestrians indoors and imposing an atmosphere of siege throughout the capital.

Central streets were barricaded against advancing tank columns of the Yugoslav People’s Army.

While Slovenia’s forces are greatly outmanned and outgunned, initial reports suggested that the federal army took the brunt of the first day of conflict. Jansa said there were more than 100 casualties, mostly government troops, although he did not specify how many of those were deaths.

Slovenian territorial defense forces claimed to have taken out of action six federal army helicopters, downing one in a spectacular fireball that spread wreckage over a Ljubljana suburb, killing both crew members.

Militiamen in flak jackets and armed with submachine guns deployed by the thousands throughout Ljubljana to protect key republic buildings and institutions.

The determined defenders of Slovenian sovereignty also claimed to have taken out 15 tanks.

Buses, trucks and snowplows were parked in major intersections and approach roads to the capital to block the federal army from advancing on Ljubljana.

Slovenes also positioned gasoline tankers at strategic blockades to deter the superior federal forces from crashing through.

While Slovenia has no armored vehicles or combat aircraft, the 180,000-man federal military has at least 2,000 tanks and 300 or more fighter planes and helicopters. There are an estimated 20,000 federal troops stationed in Slovenia.

Ljubljana authorities say they can muster 68,000 reservists, but they have arms for only about 40,000.

The clashes and hurried defensive maneuvers were provoked by a massive show of strength by the federal army just after dawn, when tanks and armored personnel carriers thundered out of their Slovenian bases with orders to take control of the breakaway republic’s borders.

Slovenian Prime Minister Lojze Peterle deplored the violence unleashed on his republic and suggested that blame for the tragedy rested partly with Western governments that failed to clearly oppose the federal government’s resort to arms.

“It would have helped a lot if Slovenia had gotten some immediate international recognition,” Peterle told reporters. “Now the (federal) army is behaving as if it is on its own territory.”

An ominous message sent to Peterle by the regional army commander, Gen. Konrad Kolsek, warned that orders from the federal capital of Belgrade to secure Yugoslavia’s borders will be “executed unconditionally” and that any Slovenian attempts at resistance will be “crushed.”

Slovenian President Milan Kucan denounced the federal action as “a merciless aggression” aimed at bludgeoning the republic into retracting its declaration of sovereignty.

Instead, Kucan authorized militiamen to use any force necessary to repel attacks by the army and defend the sovereignty of the republic of 2 million.

At least 20 clashes with federal soldiers broke out in Ljubljana and along the borders with Italy, Austria and Hungary, the Slovenian Defense Ministry reported.

Five federal soldiers were killed in a bloody confrontation with Slovenian forces in the village of Trzin, just north of Ljubljana, according to a Serbian photographer who witnessed the gun battle.

In addition to the helicopter crewmen, whose charred bodies were visible in wreckage scattered in a residential area of Ljubljana, another federal trooper was killed in a skirmish in the town of Ormoz, near the Hungarian border, according to Radio Slovenia.

Ljubljana’s Brnik Airport was closed and barricaded by both federal and Slovenian blockades. The Slovenes moved dozens of vehicles onto the runway to prevent federal troops from airlifting reinforcements into the city.

“We have orders not to shoot at the army,” explained Capt. Neven Soic, one of a handful of Slovenian reservists who stood watch at the airport approach road only a few yards from the federal military cordon.

Slovenian Defense Minister Jansa, a former peace activist, insisted that the republic’s military action will remain defensive. He said that respect for human life is the highest priority, which “will impose a limit on what casualties we are willing to suffer.”

Troops and tanks began moving out of federal army garrisons just after dawn, crashing through makeshift roadblocks and churning up farmland en route to the border facilities they were ordered to seize.

President Kucan demanded that all 4,000 Slovenian recruits serving in the federal army return home and appealed to other nationalities to desert in protest of “acts of aggression.”

At least 100 soldiers from other Yugoslav republics deserted their units in Slovenia, according to Jansa.

“The intervention of the Yugoslav army marked the beginning of its demise,” Jansa said, predicting that the federal force will fall apart along ethnic lines as troops are ordered into political and ethnic conflicts.

Jansa said the federal conscripts who gave themselves up to Slovenian forces were exhausted, hungry and confused about the mission on which they had been ordered.

Slovenia has laid in caches of food, fuel and medicine to enable the republic to wait out any siege that might be imposed by the federal forces, Jansa said.

Meanwhile, food, water and electricity have been cut off from federal bases on Slovenian territory, Radio Slovenia reported.

Republic authorities also threatened to blow up communications links if the federal army advances on the capital.

Traffic was at a standstill throughout much of the republic as the barricades intended to slow the federal army’s advance sealed off exits and on-ramps of major highways.

The Yugoslav Tanjug news agency said that buses between Croatia and Slovenia were halted but that trains were still operating between the capitals of the rebellious republics.

Military movements were reported in Croatia, which also announced its secession from Yugoslavia on Tuesday. But the federal army appeared to be intervening only to prevent further bloodletting between Croatian police and the 600,000-strong Serbian minority in the republic of 5 million. Ethnic violence killed four and injured 14 in Croatia on Wednesday, before government troops were deployed to keep the peace in ethnically mixed areas.

Slovenian leaders encouraged workers to go to their jobs as usual, but public transport was reduced to a minimum after many of the buses were conscripted to block roadways. Food and other supplies were also disrupted.

Gen. Kolsek, commander of the 5th Army Division that includes Slovenia, said in his dispatch to Slovenian Prime Minister Peterle that he was executing orders received Wednesday from the federal government in Belgrade.

The Yugoslav army is normally commanded by the federal presidency, but that body has been paralyzed by a Serbian-led boycott of Croatia’s Stipe Mesic, who was supposed to be inaugurated as head of state May 15.

Federal Prime Minister Ante Markovic called on the army to protect Yugoslavia’s borders after Slovenia and Croatia seceded. But the military intervention in Slovenia on Thursday appeared to greatly exceed those orders.

Peterle told reporters that he spoke with Markovic by phone early Thursday and was told by the federal government leader that the army’s actions were out of his control.

Hard-line Serbian Communists hold most top positions in the army high command, and Peterle implied that those militants were orchestrating the brutal crackdown on Slovenia.

Markovic appealed for a three-month moratorium on the use of force against Slovenia and Croatia, as well as for the republics to rescind their independence declarations while new negotiations among the six republics are attempted.

But Slovenian leaders said they would not step back from the barricades until the federal troops returned to their garrisons.

Yugoslavia had been in the throes of ethnic, political and economic turmoil for years, fueling a rise in nationalism in the six republics and a desire for secession by Slovenia and Croatia, the most prosperous regions of the federation.

Their secessions in effect destroyed the federation of Yugoslavia, which was created in 1918 with the idea of uniting the fractious southern Slavs of the Balkan Peninsula.

But the region’s two dozen ethnic groups have been mired in bloody conflict for centuries, and little changed during the 73 years they were forced into a fragile political alliance by royal dictatorship after the first World War and Communist dictatorship after the second.

Nationalist tensions had been mounting since the 1980 death of Communist strongman Marshal Josip Broz Tito. The federal demise accelerated after the republics held multi-party elections last year, installing nationalist leaders in both Serbia and Croatia.

The western republics seceded after failing to convince the four other federal states that a looser alliance of independent nations should be formed to replace centrally ruled Yugoslavia.

Croatian authorities said Thursday that they, too, are witnessing federal military maneuvers that were likely in preparation for a crackdown there.

Ethnic Serbs in Croatia’s Krajina region plan to unite today with a Serb enclave in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina, which could spark new violence in both of those republics.

Special correspondent Michael Montgomery contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON’S STAND: The U.S. backs a European effort to resolve the crisis. A10.

Watching Yugoslavia

The rising number of violent incidents in the wake of independence declarations by Croatia and Slovenia is drawing world response:

UNITED STATES. Secretary of State James A. Baker III appealed to Yugoslavia’s federal government to find a peaceful way out of the crisis. At the same time, he said, the republics should be allowed to express their “national aspirations.”

NEIGHBORING NATIONS. Italy and Austria urged the Belgrade government to use restraint in trying to prevent secession. There was a suggestion to seek mediation by a European Community security group.

SOVIET UNION. Government spokesman Vitaly Churkin said the Soviet Union is concerned that the “disintegration process” in Yugoslavia could hurt stability in Europe.

NATO. Member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization met in special session to call for a halt to the unrest.