Moscow Assures U.S. Balkan Envoy : Russia: But lawmakers warn Reginald Bartholomew they will resist tougher sanctions against Serbia.

The new U.S. special envoy to the Balkans, Reginald Bartholomew, won assurances Saturday that Russia will cooperate to end ethnic warfare there but was warned that the Russian legislature will resist tougher sanctions against Serbia.

“We made a thorough analysis of the state of affairs in the former Yugoslavia and agreed to work together to achieve a just and balanced settlement in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev said after a 90-minute meeting with Bartholomew.

In brief remarks to reporters, however, neither man would say whether Bartholomew secured Kozyrev’s endorsement for U.S. proposals that include tighter sanctions against the Serbs. The envoy, who arrived here Friday evening and leaves today, said he would return to Moscow for further consultations.

“My talks here were open and very, very positive,” Bartholomew said. “I think we have a basic commonality of views on the importance of this crisis, the consequences that it can have for the shape of things in Europe.”

President Boris N. Yeltsin’s government, which has cooperated with many U.S. policy initiatives, went along last year with U.N. diplomatic and economic sanctions against Serbia. Now Yeltsin is under growing pressure from conservative lawmakers, who regard the Serbs as traditional allies and kindred Slavs, to reverse them.

Five days after President Clinton took office last month, Yeltsin chided the United States for “a tendency to dictate its own conditions” in the Balkans and called on the new Administration to be more active in seeking a negotiated way out.

Bartholomew’s mission, part of a U.S. peace initiative outlined last week, seeks an important role for the Russians. It is aimed at persuading them to press the Serbs to compromise and to ensure that Moscow does not use its U.N. Security Council veto to obstruct the plan.

Washington holds Serbia responsible for most of the fighting that has killed thousands of people since the breakup of the former Yugoslav federation. The U.S. plan calls for tougher economic sanctions against Serbia, stricter enforcement of the U.N. “no-fly zone” over Bosnia and negotiations among Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia.

Bartholomew, who as ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has worked closely with the Yeltsin government on military cooperation, met first with Kozyrev and Deputy Foreign Minister Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s own special roving mediator in the Balkans, then with lawmakers at the Supreme Soviet.

“It was made clear to (Bartholomew) that the Russian Parliament will never consent to further sanctions against Serbia,” said Yevgeny Abrmartsumov, chairman of the Parliament’s Committee for International Affairs and Foreign Economic Relations.

Sergei Stepashin, chairman of the Defense and Security Committee, said the U.S. envoy tried to soften the lawmakers’ suspicions that U.S. policy is directed solely at the Serbs. He said Bartholomew agreed that sanctions should also be applied against Croatia if it continues its aggression against the country’s Serb minority.

Under questioning in the Supreme Soviet Friday, Kozyrev said Russia would stake out an independent Balkan policy. He defended sanctions against the Serbs but also praised Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic for leaning toward a U.N.-brokered peace plan.

“As soon as that policy begins to be translated into practical actions,” Kozyrev told the lawmakers, “the question of sanctions will automatically become irrelevant and I can guarantee that Russia will be the first to raise this question” at the United Nations.