U.S. Wary of Russia Offer to Bosnia : Balkans: Moscow’s proposal to send 400 troops to Sarajevo gets mixed response. Some say their presence could complicate any NATO decision on air strikes.

With two days left before a deadline for allied air strikes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Clinton Administration gave a mixed response Friday to Moscow’s proposal to move Russian troops there, publicly welcoming the initiative but privately expressing concern about the possible effect on efforts to end the siege of Sarajevo.

Senior Administration officials publicly sought to put a good face on Russia’s offer to Bosnian Serbs on Thursday to redeploy 400 peacekeepers to Sarajevo if the rebels would comply with NATO’s demand that they relocate or surrender their heavy weapons around the city or face air bombardments.

Amid signs that the Serbs were continuing to pull back some artillery Friday, Defense Secretary William J. Perry told reporters he was “cautiously, cautiously optimistic about the developments. . . . We among other nations have been requesting the Russians to assist in whatever way they can do to help the Serbs comply with the NATO directive,” he said.

In private, however, some U.S. officials conceded that they were apprehensive about any new Russian military presence, particularly about whether Moscow might use its troops to bolster U.N. and Western goals in Bosnia or would seek to protect Serb interests. The presence of troops from Russia--the Serbs’ historic patron--near Bosnian Serb artillery sites could complicate any North Atlantic Treaty Organization decision on the bombing of those targets.

Moscow’s move, which caught the Administration by surprise, raised the possibility that Russia could become an unpredictable major player in an already tangled and many-sided Bosnian conflict. The United States and other allied nations scrambled on diplomatic fronts Friday to determine Moscow’s objectives and plans, but answers remained murky.

“We expect the Russians will be under U.N operational control,” a senior Administration official said. But the official stopped short of saying that the Russians had committed to follow the lead of the U.N. commander, and signals on this point from Moscow were mixed.

Russian peacekeepers could reach Sarajevo within two days, once the United Nations grants a request from Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin to transfer them there from their current base in Croatia, reported the Itar-Tass news agency, which said Yeltsin had made such a request.

In the short term, U.S. officials contended that the surprise move by Moscow was helping the allied cause by sending a clear signal to the Bosnian Serbs that they would have to withdraw or turn over control of their artillery outside Sarajevo by the deadline of 1 a.m. local time Monday (4 p.m. PST Sunday).

“We will try to withdraw all of our weapons by 2400 tomorrow (midnight today),” Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic said after meeting with the United Nations’ top official for the former Yugoslav federation, Yasushi Akashi. That would beat by a day the NATO deadline for the heavy guns to be withdrawn or put under U.N. supervision.

Officials also stressed that the Russians, like the Americans, have the most to gain from a peaceful settlement of the crisis in the Bosnian capital because it would allow the two nations to avoid being drawn into positions that would drive a wedge into their relationship.

President Clinton is to make a televised address to the nation shortly after 7 a.m. PST today to explain the reasons for the threatened air strikes and to describe how far the Bosnian Serbs have gone in removing their weapons.

The Serbian withdrawal began in earnest on Thursday and continued on Friday, although not as rapidly as some planners had wished. Under U.N. rules, the Serbs must either pull their artillery back to positions 12 miles outside Sarajevo or place it under U.N. control.

U.S. officials, in an apparent effort to spur further action from the Bosnian Serbs, stressed that NATO intended to follow through on its threats if the terms are not fully met. “The decision was a decision and a deadline is a deadline,” one official said.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher said the Serbs had removed at least 50 heavy weapons and were continuing to take them out. U.S. officials have estimated the Serbs have at least 200, and possibly as many as 500, heavy weapons around Sarajevo.

“It means they have a lot more to take out (before the deadline),” Christopher said in a CNN interview. “They will pay a very heavy price if they don’t do it.”

The Administration is keeping a low public profile on the question of what the Russians might do in Bosnia, to avoid pushing Moscow into a corner politically for fear that nationalist pressures at home could propel them to support the Serbs more aggressively.

Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said a new Russian presence would “add a complicating factor.” But he added that because of Russia’s influence with the Serbs, “on balance, it’s positive.” Hamilton said Russia’s proposal also demonstrated a more aggressive foreign policy “that we’ve already been seeing in other areas.”

Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a former U.S. official now with the Brookings Institution, predicted that the Russians “are going to want to be sort of lawyers for the Serbs.” With their role hard to guess now, “it isn’t going to be easy to deal with them,” he said.

Russian troops already have been criticized elsewhere in the former Yugoslav federation, Sonnenfeldt noted. Some that were supposedly under U.N. control in Croatia have been accused of allowing the removal of arms from Croatian warehouses.

Clinton’s top national security advisers met for two hours Friday to discuss the Bosnian situation and other issues but announced no major new actions.

Perry is scheduled to fly to Aviano air base in Italy late today for a last-minute meeting with NATO defense ministers to reaffirm the allies’ intentions. A U.S. official said the group “will leave no doubt that” the allies plan to enforce the NATO withdrawal order.

The 16-country organization has hundreds of planes on aircraft carriers and at bases in Italy ready to attack.

To comply with the War Powers Act, Clinton sent Congress a letter Friday explaining his actions in Bosnia. The letter noted that NATO’s orders not only give it authority to strike artillery positions, but also the flexibility to hit Serbian air defenses threatening NATO aircraft.

The letter also points out that “it is not now possible to determine the length of these operations.”

As U.S. officials were giving credit to Clinton for the progress in Sarajevo, the Kremlin’s diplomatic point man on Yugoslavia, Deputy Foreign Minister Vitaly Churkin, was praising Russia for persuading the Serbs to pull back.

Churkin, speaking in Moscow, noted with pride that “Russia is now playing a central role” in the peacemaking attempts.

On another front, Yeltsin sent letters to Clinton and the leaders of France, Britain, Italy and Germany expressing concern that air strikes in Bosnia could lead to “unpredictable events” and possibly a broader war.

According to the Italian newspaper La Stampa, the letter spoke of worries “not only in Russia but in all the world” that NATO wants “to pursue designs of dominance.”

At the United Nations, a spokesman said Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali “is delighted” at the Russian offer to move 400 of its peacekeeping troops from Croatia to Sarajevo.

Joe Sills, the spokesman, described the offer as a response to a request for help made to many governments by Lt. Gen. Michael Rose of Britain, the U.N. commander in Sarajevo.

Times staff writers Carey Goldberg in Moscow and Art Pine, Norman Kempster, Doyle McManus and Stanley Meisler in Washington contributed to this report.

* PULLBACK OVERSTATED: The withdrawal of Serb forces from around Sarajevo has been overstated, the U.N. says. A14