Yeltsin Pauses on Brink of Full War in Chechnya : Russia: His troops under attack and his policy under fire at home, president offers rebels 48 more hours to disarm.

His troops under attack by guerrillas and his decision to deploy them under fire back home, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin paused Thursday at the brink of a full-scale war with the breakaway Muslim republic of Chechnya and gave the rebels 48 more hours to disarm.

In an appeal to the Chechen people read on Russian television four hours before his previous ultimatum was set to expire, Yeltsin called for a cease-fire, negotiations and setting a date for new elections in Chechnya.

“If (President) Dzhokar Dudayev personally agrees to lead the Chechen delegation to the negotiations, I will send a plenipotentiary high-level delegation from Russia,” Yeltsin’s statement said.

Yeltsin said he will extend the deadline of his ultimatum until midnight Saturday to try to “minimize the use of force, which could, regrettably, bring civilian casualties.”

“I will consider a cease-fire on the part of the unlawful armed militias to be a show of goodwill and a first step toward the restoration of peace and legality in the Chechen Republic,” the statement said.

Dudayev has previously demanded face-to-face negotiations with Yeltsin. There was no immediate word on whether he would accept Yeltsin’s offer while Russian tanks are camped six miles outside the capital of Grozny.

Russian forces have been shelling the outskirts of the garbage-strewn, decaying Soviet-style concrete-block city of 400,000. Three people were reportedly killed Thursday when a Russian helicopter gunship fired on a farm near the settlement of Dolinsk, Reuters news service said, and Russians boosted their official death toll to 15, with 11 soldiers captured. Other reports put the death toll as high as 70 on both sides in the five days of fighting.

Earlier Thursday, Dudayev had told reporters he was prepared to negotiate with Moscow. He called for a halt to Russian military activity, withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya and urgent high-level talks “with no preconditions.”

The last round of peace talks in Vladikavkaz collapsed Wednesday after Russian negotiators demanded that Chechnya drop its 3-year-old declaration of independence and disarm before Moscow would withdraw its troops. Chechen negotiators demanded that the troops withdraw as a condition for disarmament. Russian television greeted Yeltsin’s move with relief.

“Today at the last moment the hope of peace in Chechnya was preserved,” correspondent Dmitri Motrich announced.

On the fifth day of Russian military intervention in the fiercely independent Chechnya, the Russian press with rare unity begged Yeltsin not to launch a tank offensive against Grozny.

“We are on the brink of a precipice. Stop!” advised the rural daily Selskaya Zhizn.

“Tomorrow the war will enter every home in Russia,” declared the Moscow newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.

A survey by the Mnenie polling organization released Thursday found 70% of those polled opposed armed intervention in Chechnya, up from 58% six days earlier.

The Estonian capital of Tallinn offered Dudayev asylum Thursday. Dudayev, a former Soviet air force general, was once stationed in Estonia, and sided with the independence movement there.

However, even if Dudayev were to agree to leave Chechnya to help make peace with Moscow, as the anti-Dudayev opposition has demanded, it is not clear that all the rival factions would stop fighting.

Dudayev’s supporters say Chechen separatists have already set up combat posts in the mountains and plan to torment the Russian occupiers with sniper fire, terrorist attacks, rockets and missiles.

Unconfirmed reports said that a Russian helicopter downed by Chechen fighters Wednesday had been hit with a Stinger missile, presumably supplied by the United States to Afghan rebels in the 1980s and then smuggled into Chechnya by Islamic sympathizers.

Chechnya, a mountainous republic of 1.2 million, remains a poor outpost of the old Soviet empire despite its rich oil reserves. What its leader wants most is to be treated as an equal with Russia under international law, Chechnya’s deputy foreign minister said.