Yeltsin Eases Crisis With Legislators : Russia: Angry over war in Chechnya, lawmakers will be allowed role in reforming armed forces.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin appeared certain of reversing a no-confidence vote by Parliament over his government’s conduct of the war in Chechnya after pledging Tuesday to give lawmakers a bigger role in reforming the armed forces.

He also sent Russian negotiators back to the tiny Chechen republic with broader authority to negotiate a political settlement of the 6 1/2-month-old war with separatist guerrillas.

After a Kremlin meeting with leaders of 11 party blocs in the Duma, the lower house of Parliament, Yeltsin said they had demanded a “high price” for active support of the government in Saturday’s second, decisive vote--the ouster of his unpopular defense and interior ministers.

Indicating a reluctance to pay that price, the president vowed there will be no Cabinet changes before July 22, the last day of Parliament’s summer session, and said no decision will be made before his Security Council meets Thursday.

Even so, Yeltsin’s daylong lobbying blitz and sudden promises of collaboration left most lawmakers predicting a face-saving end to Russia’s worst government crisis in nearly two years.

Duma Chairman Ivan P. Rybkin said most party leaders were willing to let Saturday’s no-confidence motion fizzle by abstaining or not showing up--decisions that don’t oblige them to vote in the government’s favor. He said the first censure vote last Wednesday had served its purpose.

“The mood of most parties is this: Having demonstrated their dissatisfaction with the government’s work, there is no need to break off the cooperation between the two branches of power,” he said after the Kremlin meeting.

The Interfax news agency estimated that no more than 140 of the Duma’s 450 members will vote against the government again.

“The crisis will be overcome,” said Mikhail I. Lapshin, leader of the large Agrarian Party bloc, whose members were among the more than 240 deputies who cast no-confidence votes last week.

Under Russia’s constitution, which provides for a strong presidency, a second no-confidence vote would oblige Yeltsin to fire Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin and his Cabinet or dissolve the Duma.

Yeltsin has already stated his choice: The Duma would go, and he would rule by decree until early parliamentary elections. That threat might itself be enough to reverse the Duma’s vote.

Otherwise, said Vladimir F. Shumeiko, chairman of Parliament’s upper house, “the deputies will lose their cars, telephones, fax machines. . . . This would mean political suicide.”

Yeltsin was taking no chances. He held back-to-back meetings Tuesday with Rybkin and Chernomyrdin, the 11 party bloc leaders, heads of Russian republics and his negotiators in Chechnya.

Facing a rebellious Parliament in the autumn of 1993, Yeltsin dissolved it by military force.

The legislative body elected in December that year is weaker but still unruly and resistant to reform. Yeltsin often bypasses its laws with executive orders.

But the theme at the Kremlin on Tuesday was partnership.

Acting like any Western leader with a troublesome group of lawmakers, Yeltsin set up a “conciliatory commission” to meet regularly and iron out his disputes with the legislators. He also suggested that a government-parliamentary panel oversee military reform and report directly to him.

“Military reform in Russia is going badly,” presidential aide Georgi A. Satarov quoted Yeltsin as saying. “It practically isn’t moving ahead at all.”

Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev and Interior Minister Viktor F. Yerin have been criticized in Parliament for their ill-prepared invasion of Chechnya last December and for brutal conduct in a war that has left about 20,000 dead, mostly civilians.

Yerin is also under fire because his police failed to stop a Chechen guerrilla raid on the Russian city of Budennovsk two weeks ago and then staged two abortive attacks on the city hospital where the guerrillas were holding more than 1,000 hostages. At least 121 civilians died in the six-day siege.

A poll released Tuesday by the National Public Opinion Studies Center showed that 56% of Russian city dwellers opposed the storming of the hospital, in which hostages and guerrillas died.

The survey of 1,595 people also found 58% approved of Chernomyrdin’s handling of the siege, which resulted in freedom for the remaining hostages in return for the guerrillas’ safe conduct back to Chechnya. Just 17% of respondents supported Yeltsin, who left Russia during the crisis and said later that he and Yerin had authorized the attacks on the hospital.

Mikhail Yegorov, Yerin’s top deputy, gave a detailed defense of the storming assaults, telling reporters Tuesday that they forced the guerrillas to spend precious ammunition and agree to negotiations.

The peaceful end of the siege led to a cease-fire and talks in Chechnya last week on ending the conflict.

The guerrillas, all but defeated in Chechnya, agreed to disarm in exchange for amnesty and a phased withdrawal of all Russian troops except for two brigades--a process that would start only with a political settlement of Chechnya’s future.

For the first time in the war, Yeltsin met with peace negotiators and authorized them to seek such a settlement.

Encouraged by what a French spokeswoman called “a new spirit” in Chechnya, 15 European Union leaders agreed Monday in Cannes, France, to extend trade benefits to Russia that were held up in January because of criticism of the war.

Fighting in Chechnya, meanwhile, is picking up despite the 10-day-old cease-fire.

Five Russian soldiers have been reported killed and 17 others hurt in guerrilla attacks this week.