Ex-Soviets Will Form Peacekeeping Force : Commonwealth: Troops will try to halt ethnic strife. Work could start in Moldova before end of the month.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and the other leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States agreed Monday to form a peacekeeping force to stop ethnic violence. The force could begin its work in the war-torn southern republic of Moldova before the end of this month.

In a news conference after a one-day summit of Commonwealth leaders, Yeltsin said that the foreign and defense ministers of the member states will design the composition and structure of the peacekeeping force by July 15.

And if Moldova’s Parliament agrees, “then we will immediately create a joint peacekeeping force, which will be deployed without delay in the conflict zone in Moldova,” he said.

The formation of such a force could emerge as the first major step toward controlling the hotbeds of ethnic warfare that have plagued the former Soviet Union for four years and that foiled all peacemaking attempts by Mikhail S. Gorbachev when he was president.

Hundreds of people have died this year in fighting between Moldovans, who are ethnic Romanians, and Russian separatists in the Dniester region of Moldova.

Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev told reporters that the Commonwealth peacekeeping troops will be more effective than the United Nations’ peace forces have been in Yugoslavia.

“We are introducing a huge force to divide the warring factions--not just to act as an observing force,” Kozyrev said. “I think this is a very good alternative to the Yugoslav (strategy).”

The Russian foreign minister stressed that the creation of peacekeeping forces would be one of the biggest accomplishments yet of the Commonweath, an amorphous alliance built on the wreckage of the Soviet Union.

“I think this is a very, very positive breakthrough,” he added.

Russians, Ukrainians, Moldovans, Romanians, Belarussians and possibly Bulgarians will make up the peace force, which will likely number at least 2,000 men, according to Kozyrev.

Kozyrev expressed confidence that the force will be successful and said that all sides in the conflict, including the leaders of the Dniester region, have indicated that they will cooperate if truly impartial peacekeeping troops are sent in to stop the violence.

Soldiers from the 14th Army, which serves in the region and has been accused of fighting against Moldovans and supplying arms to Russian separatists, will not participate in the peacekeeping force.

“We are looking for troops which will be perceived by Kishinev as neutral,” Kozyrev said.

Moldovan President Mircea Snegur was heading back to Kishinev, the Moldovan capital, to try to persuade his country’s Parliament to vote in favor of allowing such a force to serve in the region.

Members of Moldova’s Parliament said they are eager for a peace force to bring an end to the bloodshed, but they are reluctant to have Russian troops participate.

“We have had a chance to see what kind of peacemakers and peace lovers some of the Russian generals can be,” Mikhail Gimpu, a member of Moldova’s Parliament, said in a telephone conversation from Kishinev. “If there is a peacekeeping force, it should be made up of some countries outside the Commonwealth.”

The peacekeeping force will later be used to try to end the bloodshed in other regions of the former Soviet Union.

But Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan, whose republic is embroiled in a territorial dispute with the neighboring republic of Azerbaijan, was solidly pessimistic.

“Unfortunately, I have to conclude that the Commonwealth does not have any mechanisms to solve ethnic conflicts,” Ter-Petrosyan said. “All of these declarations remain nothing but empty words.”

On the economic front, the Commonwealth leaders decided to form an economic court, analogous to the European Community Court of Justice, whose function will be to solve disputes between member states.

The longstanding economic ties between the republics have been severely damaged since the Soviet republics, pushing for their independence, eventually destroyed the Soviet Union last December. Their economic contacts have been made increasingly complicated as Ukraine and other republics forge ahead with plans to introduce their own currencies.

Several of the leaders said that Monday’s summit--with the combination of decisions on peacekeeping forces and on an economic court--represented a positive turnaround for the Commonwealth, which has been criticized for being incapable of implementing its decisions.