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CROATS RUSH WORK ON CRUMBLING DAM

CROATS RUSH WORK ON CRUMBLING DAM
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January 30, 1993, Section 1, Page 4Buy Reprints
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Engineers and army officers worked feverishly today to prevent a hydroelectric dam in southern Croatia from crumbling and unleashing a flood on villages downstream.

The Peruca Dam, which was blasted on Thursday night with explosives planted within it, has been a target in renewed fighting between Serbs and Croats along what was once a cease-fire line. The Serbs had rigged the dam with explosives when they captured it from Croats in the war fought after Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. The Serbs retook the dam from United Nations forces on Wednesday and held it briefly until they were dislodged by the Croats.

The 200-foot-high dam holds back an estimated 17 billion cubic feet of water in a narrow lake that stretches 12 miles. If it collapses suddenly, a torrent of water would rush down the Cetina River valley, affecting 50,000 people.

Croatian officials, including Prime Minister Hrvoje Sarinic, who visited the dam, said they felt they had contained the immediate danger. They said that no villages were being evacuated and sufficient warning would allow people to reach high ground if more trouble developed. Fighting for a Week

International officials were not so sanguine. "It's the nightmare we've been fearing since October," a senior United Nations official said.

The fighting around the dam began a week ago when Croats, who lost much of their territory in the war in 1991, attacked across cease-fire lines inland from Zadar on the Adriatic coast. They recaptured a strategic inlet at Maslenica where they say they want to rebuild a bridge reconnecting the coastal highway linking northern Croatia with its southern section.

The Croatian offensive has raised fears of a resumption of full-scale war between Croatia and Serb-controlled Yugoslavia. But a Serbian general in Belgrade said that for now the Yugoslav Army would not intervene to help the Serbian militiamen in Krajina in their fight against the Croats.

At the stricken dam today, a parade of dump trucks poured rocks, sand and earth into a deep 40-foot-wide gash in the dam's eastern end, where millions of gallons of water were cascading down 200 feet. A buckled concrete facade was all that was left of a nearby regulating tower that controlled sluice gates. Power Plant Knocked Out

Below, a 48-megawatt power plant knocked out of commission was still largely covered with mud. It had been partly submerged by the inundation that followed the explosions.

The road across the 1,300-foot top of the dam had buckled in half a dozen spots, as if from an earthquake. Ominously, it had dropped about 10 feet in the center. Croatian officials stepping gingerly along marked paths to avoid possible mines worried that internal "erosion" from the impact of explosions deep inside the dam's clay core could eventually cause it to give way.

Gen. Ante Roso, commander of the Croatian forces that retook the dam on Thursday, estimated that the Serbs had used 35 to 37 tons of explosives at seven different sites inside the dam. He said the gaping hole was caused by three charges totaling five tons.

"There may be delayed-action bombs in the dam for all we know," he added.

To relieve the pressure against the dam, engineers were trying to lower the level of the reservoir. They said they had opened diversionary outlets for the water around the dam's western end. A stream of muddy water could be seen plunging down the mountainside to join the swollen river below. 'We Have to Empty the Lake'

But they admitted that the dam would have to be rebuilt.

"It's very serious because the dam is destroyed," said Petar Stojic, an engineering professor from Split University. "The explosions have cracked the clay core. There's erosion. That's why we have to empty the lake."

Mr. Stojic said the explosions had occurred at a level of 180 feet, virtually at the base of the dam and close to its core.

United Nations troops took control of the dam from the Serbs in mid-September. Shortly afterward demolitions experts found that explosives had been planted in a well leading to a underground channel that must be opened to reduce the pressure in winter when floodwaters lift the reservoir. The booby traps were placed so cleverly that experts were afraid to remove them.

Using remote-controlled optical devices to explore the dam's underground passages, the experts theorized that the explosives might even be rigged to be set off by radio. At the time, the Serbs boasted that they had mined the structure and threatened to blow it up if the Croats tried to retake it.

Today, a Serbian spokesman in Belgrade and in Krajina, the Serbs' enclave in Croatia, sought to disclaim responsibility for the damage to the dam. "Serbs did not activate any devices," said Col. Kosta Novakic, the Krajina spokesman.

Although the dam once supplied much of the Dalmatian coast with electricity, it has not been used since the Serbs took it in 1991, leading to sporadic blackouts and brownouts.

-------------------- Peace Package for Bosnia

GENEVA, Jan. 29 (Special to The New York Times) -- After four weeks of intensive negotiations on ending the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the leaders of the three belligerent parties will be asked to sign a detailed peace package by noon Saturday, a spokesman of the conference said here. The negotiators warned that they would ask for United Nations sanctions against any party that did not sign.

The co-chairmen of the Geneva conference, Cyrus R. Vance for the United Nations and Lord Owen for the European Community, intend to convey the responses of the leaders of Bosnia's Muslims, Serbs and Croats to Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the United Nations Secretary General, early next week.

"The co-chairmen have a pretty good expectation of what is going to happen," said Fred Eckhard, the spokesman for the negotiators. The co-chairmen, he added, would be "pleasantly surprised" if the disputes were overcome.

The negotiators said in a statement to the delegations that "in the event that one of the parties will not sign, the co-chairmen would hope the Security Council will apply sanctions to insure that they do sign."

Mr. Eckhard said "substantial differences" remain over their proposal to reorganize Bosnia and Herzegovina into 10 highly autonomous provinces under a loose central government. The co-chairmen have given the parties a draft for "interim arrangements" to govern Bosnia until a formal accord is worked out.

Of the belligerent factions, only Mate Boban, leader of the Bosnian Croats, has accepted and signed the three documents of the peace package: The nine principles of a peace settlement, a cease-fire and military disengagement plan and the 10-province map. President Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia and Radovan Karadzic of the Bosnian Serbs have accepted the nine peace settlement principles but not the map.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section 1, Page 4 of the National edition with the headline: CROATS RUSH WORK ON CRUMBLING DAM. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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