From Sanatorium, a Pale Yeltsin Touts Chechen Peace Pact in TV Address : Russia: Clumsy editing of taped speech suggests ailing president can’t speak without faltering.

A pale, wooden President Boris N. Yeltsin appeared on Russian television Thursday evening, broadcasting from the sanatorium where he is recovering from a heart ailment, to herald the signing of a peace accord in the breakaway region of Chechnya.

But the tape of the president’s prerecorded remarks had been clumsily edited in at least five places, with jumpy camera work that left the impression that the 64-year-old Russian leader could not deliver his 10-minute speech without faltering.

Critics termed the speech “empty” and “Orwellian” and said the ham-handed editing raised new questions about the president’s dependence on his small, secretive circle of powerful aides.

In the speech, Yeltsin said the fragile military accord signed by Chechen and Russian negotiators Sunday represented the first real chance for peace in the separatist republic, where an estimated 20,000 people have died since he ordered in troops in December.

After months of savage warfare that led to the Chechen terrorist attack in July on the southern Russian city of Budennovsk, which left more than 120 people dead, the Russian president appeared to be at last endorsing a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

“World experience shows that practically any issue can be settled by negotiation, relying on the law and goodwill,” Yeltsin declared. “It is no secret that there are still forces, both in Chechnya and beyond, that are interested in prolonging the standoff. Our task is to control them.”

But Yeltsin devoted most of the short speech to justifying the legitimacy of the Chechnya campaign, and his passing mention of regret over the human cost of the war drew furious condemnation from those who had tried to prevent it.

“It was the most Orwellian speech I have ever heard coming from our leadership,” said Lev A. Ponomarev, a leader of the Democratic Russia movement that catapulted Yeltsin into power in 1990. “The very person directly responsible for spilling rivers of blood is telling us that he is the principal peacemaker and is explaining to us how to live in peace and harmony. The speech would have gone down well with the brainwashed audiences in Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia, but it will produce a sad and awkwardly comic effect on people who don’t want to be taken for idiots anymore.”

Valery V. Borshchev, a lawmaker of the liberal Yabloko faction, observed: “This speech is absolute hypocrisy. They failed to achieve what they wanted by military means, and now, after killing thousands of people, they have to go back to scratch and talk peace.”

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Yeltsin’s appearance came a day after rebel Chechen President Dzhokar M. Dudayev, who had scorned the Russian negotiators as “hairsplitters” and fired the Chechen negotiator who had been his representative at the peace talks, abruptly reversed himself and accepted the military accord.

The Itar-Tass news agency quoted Movladi Udugov, Dudayev’s chief spokesman, as saying Wednesday that Dudayev and his defense committee had approved the military accord.

Dudayev also named his education minister, Kozhakhmet Yarikhanov, seen by Russians as a Chechen nationalist hard-liner, to replace the dismissed negotiator, Usman Imayev.

Dudayev’s appointment of a new negotiator and Yeltsin’s endorsement of continuing the peace talks give new impetus to the search for a more durable political solution to the conflict in Chechnya.

The peace talks, being held in the Chechen capital, Grozny, under the auspices of the Organization for European Cooperation and Security, had reached an impasse over the question of Chechnya’s political status.

Anxious to put a halt to the fighting, the Russians and Chechens agreed to a military accord that includes a cease-fire, the release of all prisoners, a three-step disarmament process and a renunciation of terrorism and sabotage.

The cease-fire agreed to on Sunday, like so many of its predecessors, does not seem to be taking hold. Russian sources report repeated shelling of their positions, and on Thursday, two Russian soldiers were killed and three others wounded. No comparable casualty figures were available for the Chechens.