‘Euro-Atlantic’ Peacekeepers Proposed : Military: The force could include Russian and American soldiers operating side by side.

President Bush and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin issued a joint call Wednesday for creation of a “credible Euro-Atlantic peacekeeping” force that could include American and Russian soldiers operating side by side to stop ethnic violence like that now ravaging Yugoslavia.

Although they stopped well short of a call for immediate intervention in the Yugoslav fighting, Bush and Yeltsin proposed the establishment of an international force drawing on the military assets of member nations of both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the now-defunct Warsaw Pact.

The proposal said the force should be under the political control of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), an organization that includes the United States, Canada and all of the countries of Europe. The conference has never had a military arm, although NATO foreign ministers agreed earlier this month to provide troops if asked.

Bush and Yeltsin agreed to “lend both support and leadership to the effort to spare this (European) community further tragedies like that which has befallen the peoples of Yugoslavia.”

The proposal was contained in the broad “Washington Charter for American-Russian Partnership and Friendship,” which Bush and Yeltsin signed during a ceremony in the White House East Room.

They also signed six other documents, including the historic agreement announced Tuesday which calls for the United States and Russia to eliminate two-thirds of their nuclear arsenals during the next 11 years.

The other pacts provide for jointly studying ballistic missile defense systems; strengthening safeguards against proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons; establishing joint space exploration projects; easing various impediments to encourage U.S. business investment in Russia and create joint ventures, and banning taxation by both countries on the same business or individual.

About a dozen lesser agreements also were signed Wednesday by U.S. and Russian Cabinet officers.

Acknowledging that the international community has been unable to prevent ethnic aggression in Bosnia-Herzegovina and other parts of the disintegrating Yugoslav federation, the charter said that steps must be taken to strengthen “mechanisms for conflict prevention, management and settlement and European peacekeeping capabilities . . . if we are to adequately cope with future conflicts.”

Although Yugoslavia was taken as the model, the measures would also apply to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict and to other ethnic disputes in the former Soviet Union.

Bush and Yeltsin called on the CSCE to appoint a special representative to “address ethnic antagonisms and the treatment of minorities” throughout Europe and to strengthen the organization’s embryonic mediation and conciliation program for settling international disputes.

But the key proposal was creation of a CSCE-directed peacekeeping arm drawing on the capacities of NATO, the Western European Union and the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. The nine-member union is a security organization grouping NATO countries but without Turkey, Greece, the Scandinavian countries and non-European nations. The council includes all 16 NATO nations and the countries that used to belong to the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.

While seeming to zero in on the Yugoslav situation, the charter--covering seven typewritten pages--was intended as a guideline for U.S-Russia relations well into the next century. It declared that the two countries “reaffirm their commitment to the ideals of democracy, to the primacy of the rule of law and to respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

There were no real surprises in the text of the arms control agreement which U.S. and Russian officials had outlined in detail the day before. The pact calls for a two-stage reduction in nuclear warheads from about 10,000 today to no more than 3,500 in 2003.

However, U.S. and Russian technicians were still tinkering with minor details until the moment when Bush and Yeltsin affixed their signatures.

In one last-minute change, the ceiling for warheads on sea-launched ballistic missiles was changed from a flat 1,750 to between 1,700 and 1,750. No explanation was offered for the change which, in truth, makes no difference since the United States plans to reduce its present sea-based force from 3,840 today to 1,728, a figure that is not affected by the changed language. And Russia, which has never emphasized sea-based missiles, does not have 1,700 even today and has no plans to produce more.

The two nations also issued a new agreement spelling out conditions under which Russia could draw on a $400-million appropriation, voted by Congress last year, to help pay for the destruction of nuclear weaponry.

The agreement calling for a joint study of defenses against ballistic missiles includes consideration of a joint early-warning system for missile attacks. The proposal evolved from the Reagan Administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly called “Star Wars.”

The two presidents also signed an agreement calling for a broad range of cooperative space ventures that could lead to a permanent partnership between the world’s preeminent space powers.

For the first time, the U.S. government agreed to permit the launch of an American-made satellite on a Russian rocket. The International Marine Satellite Organization, a 64-nation consortium, wants to use a Russian Proton rocket sometime in 1996 to boost into orbit a satellite built by GE Astro Space Division of New Jersey. The decision gives a much-sought lift to the Russian commercial launch program because about half the world’s satellites are built in the United States.

Bush and Yeltsin also renewed an existing U.S.-Russia space cooperation agreement that calls for an exchange of astronauts in 1993 and a joint mission in 1994 or 1995 in which a U.S. space shuttle would dock with the Russian MIR space station. The astronaut exchange would involve an American working on the MIR and a Russian cosmonaut participating in a space shuttle mission.

Times Staff Writer Robert W. Stewart contributed to this article.