Serbs, Croats Seek Peacekeeping Troops : Yugoslavia: EC negotiator says a firm cease-fire is needed before outside forces can be sent in to stop the civil war.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia —  Lord Carrington, the former British foreign secretary trying to negotiate an end to Yugoslavia’s civil war, said he was “encouraged” after meeting Wednesday with the Serbian and Croatian presidents to discuss foreign intervention to halt the Balkan bloodshed.

Carrington said a stable cease-fire would be necessary before any peacekeeping force could be deployed between warring Serbs and Croats. But in a brief statement after his Belgrade talks, he said the goodwill to resolve the conflict is all that stands in the way of peace.

European Community mediators have been unable to secure a lasting cease-fire, despite 12 previous truces signed by Croatian, Serbian and federal authorities. Each of the cease-fires collapsed, usually within hours, because neither the Croatian nor the Serbian leaders have been able to control extremist factions within their republics.

There is also broad disagreement between Serbs and Croats over where foreign troops should be placed. Croatia wants the buffer force installed along its existing border, after Serbian-commanded federal troops have withdrawn. Serbian leaders want the peacekeepers to separate combatants along current battle lines, which would secure Serbian control of the vast areas of Croatia it now occupies.

Because repeated EC efforts have failed to force the warring factions to seriously negotiate their differences, the Western European mediators last week imposed economic sanctions on Yugoslavia and warned that there appeared little likelihood of a diplomatic solution.

But Carrington said Serbia’s call for United Nations troops is at least worth looking into.

“Both the Serbs and Croats have asked for an international peacekeeping force, either of the U.N. or of the European Community,” Carrington said before setting off on the current EC peace mission, which will also take him to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. “They’ve not done that before. So I think it’s worth going out there to see whether or not we could do something along those lines.”

At the United Nations, the Security Council heard a somber appraisal of the fighting in the Balkans from former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance and members started to move toward the possible dispatch of peacekeeping troops to Yugoslavia.

European ambassadors circulated a draft resolution that, if passed, reportedly would ask U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to report on the feasibility of assembling a peacekeeping force. But council members made it clear that they did not expect him to recommend sending troops unless a cease-fire was achieved and other conditions met.

The resolution, which the Security Council is not expected to take up formally until at least Friday, reportedly would embargo oil sales to Yugoslavia and create a sanctions committee to monitor compliance with this embargo and an earlier ineffective Yugoslav arms embargo.

Vance, Perez de Cuellar’s special representative to Yugoslavia, told reporters after briefing the council that “time is running out as the winter is coming on, as the fighting continues, as the economy continues in free fall.” But he added, “I have not given up hope.”

He said he has submitted detailed conditions to be met before it makes sense to send U.N. troops, also known as the Blue Helmets, to Yugoslavia. He declined to disclose them. But David Hannay, the British ambassador to the United Nations, said there has to be at least a cease-fire and withdrawal of all fighting troops to their barracks. “None of these things are in place,” he said, “and until they are, there’s no point in going ahead.”

In Europe, as Carrington talked with Croatian President Franjo Tudjman in Graz, Austria, and later with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade, fighting continued to rage in the shattered city of Vukovar and other areas of Croatia.

The federal news agency Tanjug said Serbian rebels and federal troops were within 100 yards of Vukovar’s center and that only hidden mines and sniper fire were delaying a Serb conquest.

But a local cease-fire was reported to be holding around the famed resort of Dubrovnik, where EC monitors were trying to arrange their own safe passage out of the besieged port and the evacuation of hundreds wounded in five days of fierce federal bombardment.

A ferry was allowed to dock in Dubrovnik after federal troops inspected it for weapons and contraband at a nearby port in the neighboring republic of Montenegro. Evacuation of the 12 EC monitors and the wounded is planned for today.

Times staff writer Stanley Meisler at the United Nations contributed to this report.

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