Bosnian Serbs Vote to Put Peace Pact to a Referendum : Balkans: Self-styled parliament refuses to approve agreement, schedules vote for May 15 and 16. Defiant action heightens prospects of military intervention.

PALE, Bosnia-Herzegovina —  Despite stern warnings of military reprisals, the self-styled parliament of Bosnia’s rebel Serbs today refused to approve an international peace accord, deciding instead to put it to a vote of the Bosnian Serb people.

The vote defied pressure from the Serbs’ backers in Yugoslavia and abroad and heightened prospects of military intervention to end Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.

“It was too crucial a decision for the parliament to take, so we put it to the people,” Radovan Karadzic, chieftain of the rebel Serbs, said. “If the international community is going to bomb us because of a referendum, they would have done it anyway.”

President Clinton, informed of the Bosnian Serb parliament’s decision, had no immediate comment. “The president was informed. He is not going to have any comment tonight,” said White House spokeswoman Lorraine Voles.

Administration officials said Clinton planned to call Secretary of State Warren Christopher to discuss the ramifications of the parliament’s action.

U.N. mediator Cyrus R. Vance--who along with Lord Owen of the European Community crafted the peace plan--told Cable News Network: “This is something that would obviously have to go to the Security Council. . . . They will be under . . . extremely heavy pressure” to change their minds.

After a marathon 17-hour session, the parliament’s deputies voted 51-2 for a May 15-16 referendum on the peace plan. Twelve deputies abstained and 10 deputies present earlier in the day left before the vote.

“The (Bosnian) parliament took the worst decision, and who knows what tomorrow will bring,” Dobrica Cosic, president of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, said.

Cosic and the leaders of Yugoslavia’s two republics, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Montenegro’s leader Momir Bulatovic, angrily stormed out of the meeting after the vote.

The vote past midnight came after leaders from Greece and Serb-dominated Yugoslavia joined the Bosnian Serbs’ leader in pleading with the lawmakers to accept the plan to avert military intervention.

Karadzic opened the legislative session with an appeal to its members to ratify the Vance-Owen plan, as it is called. Under international pressure, Karadzic signed the plan at a special conference in Athens last Sunday.

“I implore you to ratify. . . ,” Karadzic pleaded. “Either we accept this plan, or we can expect fierce attacks by NATO forces.”

Karadzic’s appeal was reinforced by Milosevic. Milosevic was an early instigator of the Bosnian Serb rebellion and an overt supporter of it until trade and other sanctions imposed by the United Nations began to squeeze the Yugoslav federation, now consisting solely of Serbia and Montenegro.

“Vote for peace,” Milosevic urged in a speech to the assembly.

Another speaker, Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis of Greece, told the gathering: “Do not commit suicide today. The destiny of the Serbian people and of the whole Balkans is in your hands . . .”

Greece is a key nation in the region and has sought to mediate the Balkans conflict.

Yugoslavia’s Cosic warned the assembly that it faced a stark choice between a military defeat or ultimately achieving its political aims in an aura of peace.

But a hard-line mood persisted among the deputies, who had twice voted against the plan, the second time just 10 days ago.

Miroslav Toholj, information minister in the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb government, said that the Americans “are only bluffing” and will never intervene in the Bosnian civil war, as Clinton has prepared plans to do.

Details of the proposed U.S. measures have not been made public, but they are widely believed to include air strikes against Bosnian Serb targets and a move to exempt Bosnian Muslims from the U.N. embargo on arms sales anywhere in what used to be Yugoslavia.

The deputies’ bypassing of the peace plan came after a long, tense debate on conditionally accepting it. Among the conditions were demands that international sanctions against Yugoslavia be lifted immediately and that territorial divisions called for in the plan be changed to guarantee permanent land links between Serb-dominated provinces.

A key element of the peace plan prepared by former Secretary of State Vance and Britain’s Owen is division of Bosnia into 10 autonomous provinces. Serbs, Muslims and Croats would each govern three provinces and one, Sarajevo, the capital, would be governed by all three groups.

“We wanted to vote for an immediate peace but those maps are crucial and we couldn’t vote for them,” Karadzic said.

Fred Eckhard, official spokesman for Vance and Owen, said last week that the mediators would not reformulate their plan.

Bosnian Serb leaders have repeatedly complained that the Vance-Owen plan would force them to concede defeat when they have won what Karadzic called a “brilliant military victory.” The Serb forces have expelled or killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims from eastern Bosnia in a process of “ethnic cleansing” aimed at creating a Bosnian Serbia allied with Serbia.

The Vance-Owen plan calls for these ethnically cleansed regions of eastern Bosnia--which before the civil war were populated mostly by Muslims--to be designated a Muslim province.

While urging endorsement of the plan, Serb leaders admitted that it was not ideal but was the only way to avert military intervention.

“All nations in history have had to make compromises to survive,” Karadzic told the assembly. “Don’t give a chance to those powers eagerly awaiting a military intervention against you.”

As the marathon session of the Bosnian Serb parliament stretched into this morning, Milosevic returned to the podium with a renewed plea that the delegates back the Vance-Owen plan, warning of disaster if they do not.

“Where did you get the ridiculous idea that Serbs will be the underdogs in this state?” he told the meeting, according to the British news agency Reuters.

“What we have now we cannot afford to put at stake and then lose it like a drunken poker player,” he said.