Clinton Steps Up Criticism of Russia for Its Handling of Chechnya Revolt : Diplomacy: President calls fighting a waste of lives. But he says U.S. will not abandon support for Moscow’s reforms.

President Clinton on Friday leveled his sharpest criticism to date at Russia’s handling of the revolt in the secessionist republic of Chechnya.

While affirming U.S. support for Russia’s right to preserve the integrity of its territory, Clinton said, “Every day the fighting in Chechnya continues is a day of wasted lives and wasted resources and wasted opportunity.

“The violence must end,” he declared at a White House-sponsored conference here on trade and investment in Eastern Europe. “I call again on all the parties to stop spilling blood and start making peace.”

A senior Administration aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Clinton considers Russian military policy in Chechnya “misguided” and is growing impatient with the rising civilian death toll.

Clinton’s unambiguous message to the Kremlin, the official said, is: “We disagree with your tactics in Chechnya, and we call on you to stop.”

But despite his disapproval of the intensified Russian drive on the Chechen capital of Grozny over the last 48 hours, Clinton said the United States will not abandon its support for movement toward democracy and free markets in Russia.

“The United States will not waver from our course of patient, responsible support” for reform in Russia, Clinton said, noting that continued progress in the former Soviet Union is a critical U.S. interest.

But Clinton pointedly did not mention Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin by name nor link him with the Russian reform movement, as he has in the past.

Clinton’s snub of Yeltsin continues a rhetorical pattern from Washington over the last several days as the military assault on Grozny claims more and more civilian lives.

Clinton personally appealed to Yeltsin last week to stop the shelling of the Chechen capital, but Yeltsin has not yet responded, and the attacks have intensified.

Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and Secretary of State Warren Christopher have distanced themselves delicately from the Russian president by noting that Washington supports reform in Russia, not any particular individual.

Christopher, in a television interview Thursday night, said, “What’s important to us is not individuals but the movement toward democracy--both market reform and democracy.”

Christopher called the Kremlin’s response to the Chechen insurrection “a real setback . . . for the progress toward democracy in Russia.”

In the Cleveland speech, Clinton also took on critics in Congress, led by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who say the United States should reconsider its political and financial support for Yeltsin and Russia if the Russian army continues to kill civilians in Chechnya.

“It would be a terrible mistake to react reflexively to the ups and downs that Russia is experiencing and was bound to experience all along and will continue to experience in the years ahead,” Clinton said. “If the forces of reform are embattled, we must renew, not retreat from, our support for them.”

A senior Administration official traveling with the President said the U.S. government believes that the Russians will move toward a cease-fire after they have taken Grozny.

“This has almost become a question of face and domestic Russian politics,” the official said. “We believe they will seize Grozny and then seek a political way out.”

In Moscow, Russia’s lower house of Parliament, the Duma, called on Yeltsin to halt the hostilities in Chechnya, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

The Duma also proposed setting up a commission to investigate who is responsible for the death and destruction there.

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In addition, it approved an amendment that requires the president to get special parliamentary approval before using troops for anything other than “defense of the country.”

In the future, under the Duma amendment to the law on defense, the president will also need special dispensation from Parliament to launch military operations that would require heavy new financing.

However, the Duma balked at passing a law that would have put an immediate stop to the Russian military offensive in Chechnya.

“We did not want the war, but it happened,” said Vyacheslav Marychev, a member of the hawkish Liberal Democratic Party. “Now, to show (Chechen President Dzhokar M.) Dudayev and other possible separatists that they will never split Russia, we have to lead this war to the end. . . . We have to teach them a good lesson for the future.”

Less hard-line deputies were appalled that the Duma, which has heavily criticized the war in Chechnya, did not move to stop it.

“This is all very sad,” lawmaker Vladimir Lysenko said. “People are being killed every minute while we are wasting time here.”

Clinton also used his Cleveland speech to defend his controversial agreement with North Korea designed to stop Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.

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The deal came under harsh attack Thursday from former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who condemned the pact as an unprincipled payoff to a rogue state.

Republicans in Congress are planning a series of hearings on the North Korean deal with an eye toward cutting back the $4 billion that the Administration has proposed spending on reactors and other assistance to North Korea.

Clinton responded that the deal “stops North Korea’s nuclear program in its tracks.”

He added that the alternatives proposed by critics are “either unfeasible or foolhardy.”

Times staff writer Carey Goldberg in Moscow contributed to this report.