Yeltsin Calls Cease-Fire, Demands Surrender : Russia: Chechen rebels, under heavy attack, are given 48 hours to lay down their arms and accept an amnesty.

President Boris N. Yeltsin ordered Russian forces today to halt all attacks on armed secessionists in Chechnya for 48 hours and demanded that the rebels surrender by the end of that period.

It was the most sweeping of three presidential orders in three weeks to halt a month-old Russian offensive that has claimed thousands of lives in the tiny Muslim republic and subjected Yeltsin to growing condemnation at home and abroad.

Announcement of the unilateral cease-fire, signed by the Russian government “on orders of the president,” came after midnight from two Russian news agencies after another day of relentless shelling of Chechnya’s presidential palace. The cease-fire took effect at 8 a.m. today, and early reports from Grozny said it apparently was taking hold.

The communique called on the heavily outnumbered Chechens, waging a backs-to-the-wall defense of Grozny, their nearly destroyed capital, to abandon their positions, lay down their weapons and release their Russian war prisoners by 8 a.m. Thursday in return for safe-conduct passes to their homes and amnesty from prosecution.

“The government of the Russian Federation expresses hope that the members of illegal armed formations will wisely accept the offer for the sake of peace and quiet in the Chechen Republic,” the announcement said.

There was no immediate response from President Dzokhar M. Dudayev, whose few thousand irregulars have put up stunningly effective resistance to the Kremlin’s mighty army in that force’s bloodiest conflict since the Afghanistan war, but who appeared this week to be losing control of Grozny.

Equally uncertain was whether the Russian military--which ignored presidential orders two weeks ago to stop bombing civilians and last week to stop bombing Grozny altogether--would obey its commander in chief this time. It was unclear too whether the Russian cease-fire would depend on the Chechens’ immediate compliance with Yeltsin’s terms.

Yeltsin’s failure to control the armed forces has alarmed Western leaders, who first dismissed the conflict as an internal Russian affair; they now fear that the 63-year-old president, long identified with democracy and free-market economics, is increasingly captive to a reactionary and aggressively nationalist inner circle.

On Thursday, President Clinton sent Yeltsin a letter supporting Russia’s efforts to keep Chechnya within the federation but lamenting the “enormous civilian casualties” there and calling for a negotiated settlement. The same day, the European Union’s executive body, protesting Russia’s indiscriminate use of force in Chechnya, froze an important trade accord with Moscow.

Today’s announcement said nothing about peace negotiations. It said Russian commanders were given orders not only to cease fire but also to enforce the terms of surrender spelled out for the Chechens.

But Sergei A. Kovalev, Yeltsin’s human rights commissioner and leading critic of the war, quoted Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin as calling the unilateral cease-fire “the beginning of the negotiating process.”

Speaking to reporters before the cease-fire was ordered, Kovalev said he was returning to Chechnya with a cease-fire proposal supported by Yeltsin and Chernomyrdin, who has taken a less hawkish position than others around the president.

Kovalev, who met with both men in Moscow last week, suggested that the 48-hour cease-fire period would be used by each side to remove its dead and wounded from the battlefields, and then could be extended for talks on a lasting cease-fire and settlement of Chechnya’s political status.

The cease-fire coincided with scheduled urgent talks on Chechnya in Brussels today between U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and Russian and North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials. Willy Claes, secretary general of the Western alliance, said he was “looking to the Russians . . . to promote a peaceful settlement.”

Dudayev, who first provoked the Kremlin’s ire three years ago by declaring Chechnya’s independence, has repeatedly called for peace talks, usually conditioned on a withdrawal of Russian forces from his republic in the Caucasus Mountains 1,000 miles south of Moscow.

The former Soviet bomber pilot appeared in a videotape on Chechen television Monday but technical difficulties made his voice inaudible. Placards saying, “Arise Chechnya, arise to gazavat (holy war)!” also appeared on the screen.

Dudayev’s whereabouts were unknown. He is believed to have fled the 10-story presidential palace that remains the center of the Chechens’ crumbling resistance.

After defeating the Russians’ New Year’s Eve tank assault on Grozny, the Chechens are fighting a new push into the capital by several armored Russian battalions with dozens of tanks and armored personnel carriers. Reports from Grozny said the Russians hammered the heart of the city with hundreds of shells and rockets Monday. The capital’s oil refinery was shelled again and on fire.

Chechens armed with rocket grenades ducked in and out of shattered buildings, trying to disable the tanks, reporters in Grozny said. But a Chechen retreat seemed inevitable, as transport planes landed every half hour at two nearby Russian air bases with fresh troops for the offensive.

It remained to be seen whether the Russian army, apparently so close to seizing its objective, would stop fighting for the next two days, giving the Chechens an opportunity to regroup.

Sergei Yushenkov, chairman of the Russian Parliament’s defense committee, said Monday that some Defense Ministry officials were opposed to a cease-fire, fearing their soldiers could become easy targets for Chechen snipers.