Yeltsin Offers to Mediate in Karabakh Clash

President Boris N. Yeltsin intervened in the seemingly endless conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh on Friday, but efforts to arrange a cease-fire seemed doomed.

In a message to the presidents of rivals Azerbaijan and Armenia, the Russian leader expressed alarm at the fighting and offered to mediate, his spokesman said in a statement.

Both the Transcaucasian nations denied any knowledge of a cease-fire announced Thursday by Russian Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev and due to begin at noon (1 a.m. PDT) Friday.

As hostilities continued, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry accused Armenian forces of shelling Fizuli, a strategically vital town south of the disputed enclave, and capturing a nearby village.

At least five soldiers were killed in the Armenian attacks.

Grachev hosted talks Thursday attended by senior ministers from the rival former Soviet republics in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi. He said afterward they had agreed to a cease-fire.

But Aram Abramyan, spokesman for Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan, told local reporters that the Sochi talks had been informal. “There was neither a verbal nor a written agreement on a cease-fire,” he said.

A similar statement came from the Azerbaijani government. But both sides confirmed that they had agreed in principle to send their prime ministers to peace talks in Moscow April 13.

Yeltsin, in his message to Ter-Petrosyan and Azerbaijan’s President Abulfez Elchibey, warned that any attempt to impose a solution by force would fail.

Yeltsin hosted talks between the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents in 1991, but they proved as fruitless as all other attempts thus far to end the bloodshed.