Russia Improves Ties With Bosnia : Balkans: Move is seen as a step away from Serb allies and a gesture aimed at regaining goodwill of West, Islamic nations.

By RICHARD BOUDREAUX

Feb. 4, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

MOSCOW —

In another step back from its onetime Serbian allies, Russia agreed Friday to exchange diplomatic representatives with Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Muslim-led government.

Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev, who announced the move, said Russia will keep pressing the Bosnian Serbs with “every means and every lever” to end nearly three years of ethnic warfare against the Bosnian government.

Kozyrev met here with Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic and agreed to exchange representatives as a step toward full diplomatic relations. Russian Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, who also received him, said the new ties will lead to Russian sales of badly needed natural gas to Bosnia.

Moscow recognized the Bosnian government in Sarajevo in 1992 and has voiced support for its equality with other parts of the former Yugoslavia. So far that support has been merely symbolic.

Until last year, Russia often used its diplomatic weight to oppose Western moves to isolate the Bosnian Serbs and the Serbian government in Belgrade, which refuse to recognize Bosnia within its current borders. And Russian peacekeeping troops under U.N. command in Bosnia have shown favoritism to the Serbs, historical allies with whom the Russians share Slavic heritage and Orthodox Christian faith.

The level of distrust was underscored in Sarajevo this week when Bosnian Muslim soldiers boarded a U.N. peacekeeping truck and beat several Russian officers with their rifles. They accused the Russians of taking unauthorized photographs.

Russia, however, is now backing a peace plan that would reverse the Serbs’ military gains by giving 51% of Bosnia to a federation of Muslims and Croats and the rest to the Serbs. The plan is endorsed by the five-nation Contact Group--Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.

Bosnia’s government has accepted the plan; the Serbs, who have seized about 70% of Bosnia in the war, have rejected it.

Talks between the warring sides have broken off, imperiling a four-month cease-fire due to expire April 30.

“We now have three more months to achieve a political settlement and, primarily, the adoption of the Contact Group plan by the Bosnian Serbs,” Kozyrev said. “Every means and every lever available to the international community, both positive and negative, should be used.”

Under questioning by reporters, Kozyrev took no position on France’s call for a summit of major powers and belligerent parties to rescue the peace process. Silajdzic said Bosnian leaders believe that such a meeting might alter the peace proposal in the Serbs’ favor.

“We don’t need any brokers other than the Contact Group itself,” he said. “Anything else will be a waste of time.”

Kozyrev said the initiative by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe was one of many ideas the Contact Group should weigh as a means to break the deadlock.

“No one is calling the plan of the Contact Group into question,” he said. “We are convinced here in Russia that no deviations or compromises are admissible as regards to that plan.”

Russia’s decision to upgrade ties with Bosnia was apparently driven by a desire to reassure both Western and Islamic nations of its goodwill. Moscow has damaged its standing in both camps with a 7-week-old military assault on Chechnya, a breakaway Muslim province in southern Russia.

“Today is a very important and sensitive moment for the entire Islamic world,” Silajdzic noted. “It is very important that the developments in Russia don’t turn the discontent accumulated in the Islamic world against Russia.”

Kozyrev said he assured his guest, a Muslim by faith, that the war in Chechnya “is not an interconfessional conflict.”

He also said Russia values a “commonality of actions and proximity of approaches” on Bosnia with U.S. and other Western leaders, who have criticized the brutality of Russia’s offensive in Chechnya.

Silajdzic arrived here from Washington, where he met with Vice President Al Gore and with Secretary of State Warren Christopher. He headed next to Munich for a meeting aimed at patching up the shaky Muslim-Croat federation in Bosnia--an alliance of former enemies fostered by the Americans to isolate the Bosnian Serbs.

Richard C. Holbrooke, the assistant U.S. secretary of state who will chair the meeting, said Silajdzic had requested it because the alliance was under “tremendous strain.”

Instead of building a coalition government, Croats and Muslims in Bosnia have been creating separate schools and police forces and maintaining separate armies.