Yeltsin, Foes Reportedly Reach Accord on Siege : Russia: Tentative plan calls for disarming guards in Parliament. It indicates standoff may end nonviolently.

Representatives of President Boris N. Yeltsin and the leadership of the Russian Parliament early today reached a tentative agreement to end the siege of the Parliament building in return for the disarming of extremist guards inside, according to news reports here.

The reports, quoting Yeltsin’s chief of staff, Sergei A. Filatov, said that the government had agreed to partially restore electricity and communications to the besieged Parliament if its guards put aside their weapons.

The agreement is the first clear sign that the 10-day standoff around the downtown Moscow Parliament building could end without violence. The scene around the so-called White House has become increasingly tense as government troops and riot police have tightened their cordon to prevent assistance from reaching more than 100 lawmakers and their armed guards inside.

It also comes as representatives of the two sides prepare for further negotiations today, mediated by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexi II, the country’s senior churchman, to end the physical and political stalemate.

Full details of today’s tentative agreement were unclear, but reports from Russia’s Interfax news agency indicated that the Parliament guards were to stockpile their arms inside the building. Filatov was quoted as saying the blockade could be fully lifted within a couple of days.

The reports said the agreement must be ratified by the beleaguered lawmakers. Whether they will agree is unknown, but most observers believe the vast majority of them are desperate for the siege of the darkened, heatless, and increasingly militarized building to end.

But there were still no signs that Yeltsin was ready to remove 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.

Alexi II is expected to explore a basis for compromise as he presides over talks today at Moscow’s historic Danilevsky Monastery, the patriarch’s headquarters.

Thursday’s decision to let Alexi II mediate 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.

The president’s agreement to brokered talks met with praise. “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, had been 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 Dec. 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 had been insisting that they were prepared to remain in the building indefinitely.

Under the tentative accord reached today, bodyguards of Rutskoi and Khasbulatov, as well as a limited number of volunteers, would be allowed to keep their weapons.

Government authorities had earlier expressed 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.

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 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, had 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 chief of staff 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 into 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.

Yeltsin responded to the pressure by sending a cadre of Cabinet members around the country to mollify the restive politicians.

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