Communists Elect New Leader in Azerbaijan : Soviet Union: The party is expected to appeal for reconciliation with warring nationalists.

The Azerbaijani Communist Party elected a new leader Thursday amid indications that it is preparing to negotiate with the nationalist Azerbaijani Popular Front in an effort to end fighting in Baku between Soviet troops and the front’s supporters.

Ayaz Mutalibov, the Azerbaijani prime minister, was chosen over three other nominees as the party’s first secretary at an all-night meeting of its Central Committee. He replaces Abdul-Rakhman Vezirov, who fled Baku last weekend as Soviet troops entered the city.

Vezirov, a former diplomat installed as party leader in May, 1988, to deal with Azerbaijan’s rising nationalism, was formally dismissed and accused of “serious mistakes that led to the crisis.”

The official Soviet news agency Tass, reporting from Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, said the party leadership discussed at length the turmoil in Azerbaijan and measures being taken to restore calm there, but it provided no details of their decisions.

Mutalibov, an engineer by training and for six years head of the Azerbaijani planning commission before becoming the republic’s prime minister, is expected to address the people by radio--the television station has been sabotaged--in the next day or so. He is expected to appeal for reconciliation and propose that the Azerbaijani Popular Front be given a share of power.

“The Popular Front will be offered something, something substantial,” a well-placed party source said Thursday. “It will not be as much as they want, but it will be much more than they could hope to win. . . . We all want to see peace there.”

Sporadic, guerrilla-style attacks on the troops continued around Baku, according to reports from the Soviet Interior Ministry. One soldier was killed Thursday and another was seriously wounded, and the official death toll now stands at more than 170.

But the heavy fighting between Azerbaijani nationalists and Soviet troops appears to have ended. Lt. Gen. Vladimir Dubinyak, the military commandant in Baku, said Thursday that he believes the situation in the city has stabilized.

Stores Reopened

Some stores in the city are open again, according to Tass, and public transport is being resumed. Factories remain idle, however, because of the shortage of raw materials.

Interior Minister Vadim V. Bakatin, meeting with police officials in Baku, indicated that the central government will support negotiations between the Azerbaijani party and the nationalists.

“There are undoubtedly healthy forces within the Popular Front with whom the police must actively cooperate,” Bakatin said.

Although commentators and journalists made similar suggestions earlier in the week, Bakatin is the first top-ranking official to propose cooperation with the Azerbaijani Popular Front, a number of whose leaders have been detained under the state of emergency.

Bakatin added, apparently as an inducement to the Popular Front, that the present nighttime curfew in Baku could be lifted soon if the police are able to re-establish order and restore public confidence in law enforcement.

In Moscow, Gennady I. Gerasimov, the chief Foreign Ministry spokesman, announced Thursday that under an agreement reached with the Azerbaijani Popular Front, the evacuation of Russians, Armenians, Jews and other nationalities has been suspended on the assurance that they will not be harmed. Most are the dependents of army officers.

More than 30,000 people have been brought to Moscow in the last three days in a massive airlift organized after Azerbaijani militias began attacking Russians in Baku. The wives of two officers were killed.

Meanwhile, a leader of the Azerbaijani Popular Front told a news conference in Moscow that a guerrilla war against the government is inevitable unless Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev withdraws the “occupation forces” sent in last Saturday to restore order.

In another development, a cease-fire was agreed to by the Armenian All-National Movement and the Nakhichevan Popular Front, along the border between Armenia and the autonomous Azerbaijani region of Nakhichevan, which lies south of Yerevan on the Soviet frontier with Iran.

The violence in the republics has arisen in part from ethnic tension between the Azerbaijanis, who are primarily Muslim, and the Armenians, who are primarily Christian.