Russia, Chechen Separatist Agree to Mediated Peace Talks : Caucasus: Negotiations are to start Thursday under aegis of OSCE, which has been trying for a month to bring warring sides together.

Separatist leader Dzhokar M. Dudayev and Russian officials in Chechnya have agreed for the first time in their five-month war to hold peace talks led by an outside mediator.

The negotiations are to start Thursday in Grozny, Chechnya’s Russian-held capital, under mediation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has been trying for a month to bring the warring sides together.

Sandor Mezsaroz, a Hungarian diplomat who heads the OSCE mission, announced the agreement Monday. He said both parties accepted his proposal to call a cease-fire during the talks, although there was no confirmation of that from the Russians or Chechens.

“We will listen to both sides and try to push them closer to a peaceful resolution,” Mezsaroz said in a telephone interview from Grozny. “We are not just observers. We will participate actively in these talks.”

All peace negotiations and cease-fire orders have broken down rapidly in the southern republic since the Russian military invaded it in December to crush Dudayev’s bid for independence. An estimated 20,000 people have died in the fighting, which has intensified in the past 10 days with a Russian offensive against separatist bases in the Caucasus Mountains.

OSCE--which groups the United States, Canada and 51 nations of Europe and the former Soviet Union--is the first outsider to try to make peace in Chechnya. Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin accepted its six-member mission in Chechnya at the insistence of the Clinton Administration and other Western governments critical of Yeltsin’s war.

The OSCE-sponsored talks, if held, would be a minor breakthrough. But prospects seem remote.

Yeltsin was unable to restrain his own military in a unilateral, two-week cease-fire called last month to try to pacify Chechnya during Moscow celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Under pressure from Russian commanders, Yeltsin ignored Clinton’s appeal in their May 10 summit here to extend the cease-fire indefinitely.

Military leaders from the two sides will not take part in the first round of OSCE talks, Mezsaroz said. Instead, he has invited Dudayev; Nikolai Semyonov, the Kremlin-appointed administrator of Chechnya, and Umar Avturkhanov, a leader of the Russian-appointed Chechen government in Grozny, to Thursday’s session.

“We have to start at a political level,” Mezsaroz said. “If the talks advance, we will bring in the military commanders at a later stage.”

Chechen and Russian commanders last met on their own May 2. The Russian commander failed to show for a scheduled meeting on May 4. The Chechen commander, Aslan Maskhadov, called Wednesday for new talks. But Russian Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev, eager for a military victory, said there could be no more negotiations unless separatist fighters, besieged in their mountain strongholds south of Grozny, agree to lay down their arms.

Semyonov, the top Russian civilian in Grozny, agreed to take part in the talks after Yeltsin on Saturday told Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin to renew his peace efforts in Chechnya.

Mezsaroz would not say if Dudayev is coming to Grozny or sending a representative to the talks, which will be at the OSCE mission’s headquarters in a home rented from a wealthy Chechen businessman.

But the diplomat said Dudayev, who was ousted in the Russian invasion of his capital in January, received an OSCE team at his hide-out May 11 and agreed to accept its role as a mediator. Russian media reported last week that Dudayev has been working on a plan to end the war.