Yeltsin Agrees to Let Patriarch Mediate Standoff

President Boris N. Yeltsin joined his parliamentary opponents on Thursday in agreeing to negotiations mediated by Russia’s senior churchman to end a dangerous 10-day standoff at Parliament headquarters.

It was the most concrete indication so far that the armed confrontation in downtown Moscow could end peacefully.

But there were still no signs that Yeltsin was ready to back down on a key stumbling block to settlement of the crisis: his insistence that new parliamentary elections be held in December, six months before presidential elections.

Yeltsin’s opponents have said that the scheduling of simultaneous elections, perhaps in February or March, might defuse the crisis.

Instead, the talks, to be mediated by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexi II, are expected to focus initially on how to disarm the cadre of more than 100 people’s deputies, or legislators, and others besieged in the Parliament building by thousands of government troops and riot police. The talks are to begin today at Moscow’s historic Danilevsky Monastery, the patriarch’s headquarters.

Thursday’s move toward negotiations came as Yeltsin, who otherwise seemed to have the winning hand in the confrontation, faced increasing pressure from regional officials across his vast country to end the stalemate.

On their side, the besieged Parliament members sensed an opportunity to peacefully escape their cold, darkened, provisionless, militarized refuge.

“It is far too early to talk of a breakthrough,” said Nikolai K. Svanidze, a political analyst in Moscow, “but it is a humble attempt to remind each other of the possibility of a dialogue.”

Tensions around the riverside legislative building, known as the White House, were aggravated Thursday morning when seven armored personnel carriers appeared to reinforce the lines of troops.

A day earlier, the government had warned the legislators to give up their weapons by Monday or face “grave consequences.” The ultimatum did not spell out the consequences, and government spokesmen took special pains on Thursday to reiterate that no armed assault on the building was being contemplated.

The political and physical confrontation has grown more acute since Yeltsin’s Sept. 21 order dismissing the lawmakers and scheduling new parliamentary elections for December 11 and 12. Later, he also set new presidential elections for June 12, two years ahead of schedule. So far, he has not said explicitly that he will be a candidate.

Over the following days most of the more than 600 deputies who had convened in the White House quit the building, leaving a rump cadre of about 150 people, including mostly hard-line deputies and their armed guards. At the center of the group were Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi, a Yeltsin opponent elected “acting” president by Parliament the night of Yeltsin’s order, and Parliament Chairman Ruslan I. Khasbulatov. Both insisted they were prepared to remain in the building indefinitely.

The government cut off water, electricity, heat and communications to the building and ringed it with steel barricades and razor wire, progressively restricting access every day but allowing people to leave. Moscow police said Thursday that 586 people have left since Sept. 21, including legislators and service personnel. It was impossible to determine precisely how many deputies and guards remained inside.

Meanwhile, government authorities expressed increasing concern that a core of hard-liners was intent on provoking violence from inside the building. Police in the area have engaged in skirmishes with small bands of Parliament supporters over the last three nights, with three people killed in related violence so far.

Clashes continued Thursday night, according to Moscow police sources, with several people hospitalized. The exact number and the nature of their injuries could not be ascertained.

Throughout the day on Thursday, signs increased that both sides were seeking a way to end the White House siege without gunplay. Rutskoi first announced through aides that he would stockpile his guards’ weapons inside the White House and place them under independent supervision if Yeltsin would agree to restore water, power and heat to the building.

He also repudiated a threat Wednesday by a supporter inside the White House to order defense troops to “shoot to kill” any government forces trying to storm the building. All such forces are under Rutskoi’s own control, an aide said, and will remain so.

Around the same time, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei M. Shakhrai, a top Yeltsin aide, said that the blockade would be lifted if the building’s defenders surrendered their arms and left the premises. By late in the day, both sides had accepted the offer by patriarch Alexi, who had cut short a visit to the United States, to mediate the standoff.

Both sides appointed high-level emissaries to participate in today’s session. Yeltsin is to send his chief of staff, Sergei A. Filatov, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, and First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets. Rutskoi will send Ramazan Abdulatipov, chairman of the Parliament’s Council of Nationalities, and Venyamin Sokolov, deputy chairman of the Parliament.

As it happens the negotiations may also carry great importance for the church; some observers see the talks as Patriarch Alexi’s best opportunity to rehabilitate his and the church’s sullied reputation in the eyes of many Russians.

Alexi, an ethnic Estonian who was elected patriarch by a church synod in June, 1990, has drawn criticism over the intervening years for not supporting Yeltsin unambiguously during the attempted hard-line coup of August, 1991. He has also disappointed politically liberal followers by not forthrightly acknowledging the courage and suffering of such dissident priests as Father Gleb Yakunin, who spent years as a prisoner in the Soviet gulag and later became a deputy in the Parliament.

The Russian Orthodox Church is still living down its reputation for collaborating with Soviet power. Many priests were popularly regarded as KGB informers under the Communists, and as an entity the church rarely if ever took a strong stand against Soviet policy.

“Alexi II is grabbing at the chance history granted him,” said Svanidze. “The patriarch should be the one who reconciles top secular authorities. That is the way it worked in pre-revolutionary Russia, and this is the way it is meant to work today. The Orthodox Church wants to come out of this crisis as a peacemaker.”

As for Yeltsin, he must move decisively to quell an emerging revolt by administrative and legislative leaders of regions and autonomous republics across Russia. Many of them have backed the most popular compromise scenario, by which Yeltsin would agree to simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections in late winter or early spring. On Thursday, Yeltsin again rejected the so-called “zero option,” however.

On Thursday, representatives of 62 of the nation’s 88 regions, fashioning themselves the “Council of Subjects of the Federation,” voted to insist that Yeltsin end the White House blockade and rescind his Sept. 21 order.

A day earlier, Siberian legislators threatened to establish a Siberian republic, withhold oil and gas deliveries to the central government and block the Trans-Siberian Railway unless the government compromised.

Alexei Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.