Russia to Send Peacekeepers to Restive Georgia : Military: Moscow hopes to avert further warfare in Abkhazia province. Some worry about impartiality.

In a move viewed with some apprehension in the West, Russia announced Friday that it will send 4,000 peacekeeping troops to neighboring Georgia to prevent a resurgence of ethnic warfare in Georgia’s secessionist Abkhazia province.

Russian Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev made the announcement in Georgia after gaining approval from the leaders of Georgia and Abkhazia, who had signed a partial peace accord May 14.

The Russian troops will reinforce a fragile cease-fire and oversee the return of thousands of refugees.

The peacekeeping mission, expected to get a go-ahead from the Russian Parliament next week, will be the first set up by Moscow under the gaze of U.N. observers. As such, it will be a closely watched trial of whether Russian troops can promote stability along Russia’s perimeter without imperial bullying or taking sides in other people’s feuds.

“In Georgia, a fundamental test of peacekeeping in the former Soviet Union is imminent,” Madeleine Albright, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in a speech Wednesday, noting that Russian army units have in the past “exacerbated local conflicts,” including the one in Abkhazia.

President Clinton rejected an appeal by Georgian leader Eduard A. Shevardnadze in March to put a U.S. peace force in Abkhazia to limit Russian influence.

And last month, U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali ruled out U.N. peacekeepers there because Georgia and Abkhazia had failed to settle their thorniest difference--Abkhazia’s demand for independence.

Burdened by almost 300,000 war refugees, Shevardnadze reluctantly accepted the Russian peacekeeping offer.

Georgian officials said they hope that the refugees, mostly ethnic Georgians forced to flee last year from Abkhazia, which had a prewar population of half a million, will feel safe enough to go home and ease an enormous strain on Georgia’s war-torn economy.

Having driven out the Georgian army but fearing its return, Abkhazian leader Vladislav Ardzinba accepted the Russian troops more eagerly. They will be deployed along the Ingur River, which separates the ethnically distinct province from the rest of Georgia.

“The sooner the Russians arrive and stand at the border, the sooner we can rebuild our economy without having to look back over our shoulder,” said Zurab Argun, an Abkhazian television commentator.

More than 3,000 people died in 13 months of fighting in Abkhazia, which started with a Georgian attempt to crush the province’s limited autonomy and ended last September in an Abkhazian victory with covert Russian military support.

Grachev said 2,500 Russian troops already based in Georgia and Armenia will make up the first peacekeeping contingent and will take up positions as early as a week from now. They will soon be reinforced, he said, by 1,500 infantry troops from Russia and, eventually, by troops from other former Soviet republics of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union and its army in 1991, Russia has openly sided with a breakaway Russian-speaking province that was fighting the central government of Moldova and with the pro-Communist government of Tajikistan, which is still fighting a guerrilla movement.

In both bloody clashes, Russia called its forces “peacekeepers” and said they were acting in the interest of regional stability.

Because of the imperial taint of such missions, the United Nations and the West have refused Russia’s request that its troops be given the “blue helmet” status of U.N. peacekeepers--and be paid out of U.N. funds.

At the same time, Western leaders recognize that few nations, except Russia, are willing to put troops on the line in the conflicts of the former Soviet Union.

“The fact is that the Russians are going to do things in these areas,” said a senior Western diplomat who has come to accept that Moscow will exercise a relatively free hand in the region. “The point is to work with the Russian grain, not against it.”

The diplomat and other Western officials said talks were under way in the U.N. Security Council on ways to give the Russian peacekeepers informal recognition and perhaps even “voluntary” financial contributions--while keeping a close eye on their behavior.

“We are not explicitly approving (the Russian force), but working with it,” said Fyodor Starcevic, who oversees 22 U.N. observers in Abkhazia.

Georgian officials said they were told that the U.N. observer force will be expanded to at least 80 soldiers and that they will guard weapons depots.

Even with such informal supervision, many in Georgia and the West worry that the Russian peacekeepers will serve as a tool for Moscow’s renewed efforts to dominate the Caucasus Mountain region where Georgia is located.

Russia is already planning to build five permanent military bases in the region and hopes to gain a peacekeeper role in the 6-year-old war between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenians in that nation’s Nagorno-Karabakh district.

“It was very dangerous to sign this agreement,” said a Georgian Foreign Ministry official, fearful that the Russian presence will mean a de facto partitioning of Georgia, with independence for Abkhazia.

“The good news is that this agreement will bring stability to this part of the Caucasus,” said John Colarusso, a specialist on the region at Canada’s McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. “The bad news is that it will strengthen Moscow’s imperial hold on the whole area.”

Times special correspondents Hugh Pope in Istanbul, Turkey, and Chris Bird in Tbilisi, Georgia, contributed to this report.