Yeltsin Strolls Back to Work at Kremlin : Russia: A month after a heart attack, the president glad-hands tourists. He proposes Moscow talks for leaders of Croatia, Serbia.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin bounded back to work Monday, almost a month after suffering a heart attack, with a glad-handing stroll to his Kremlin office and a call to warring Serbs and Croats to hold peace talks here.

Clearly rested and more dynamic than he has appeared in months, Yeltsin told his Russian press entourage that he believes Moscow can make a significant contribution to restoring peace in the Balkans because of its good relations with the outcast Serbs.

Yeltsin suggested that Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman meet here to negotiate an end to the years of combat that have ravaged the former Yugoslav federation.

There was no immediate commitment from Milosevic, the Serb nationalist strongman widely blamed for igniting the Balkan war with his campaign to unite all Serbs in an ethnically pure state.

But a senior Foreign Ministry official was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying there was a “rather high” probability that Tudjman would use the Kremlin’s good offices with the Serbs to try to settle his long-running conflict with rival Milosevic.

“Judging by the statements of Croatian top officials, including high-ranking officials from the Croatian Foreign Ministry, Zagreb is willing to talk with Belgrade on normalization of relations. The question is what price the two sides are ready to pay to reach this goal,” the senior diplomat said.

Yeltsin told journalists he had spoken with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to enlist his influence with the Croats, while Russia pressed its Orthodox Slav allies, the Serbs, to resume negotiations. “If worse comes to worst, we will call in our peacekeeping troops there” in Serb-occupied Croatia, said Yeltsin. “Certainly, they won’t make war on us.”

Yeltsin and Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev have routinely cautioned the North Atlantic Treaty Organization states against further use of air power to cow the rebel Serbs, who have seized huge swaths of territory in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Russians have warned that attacks on the insurgents would only widen the warfare that has already killed more than 200,000 people.

Russia’s kid-glove treatment of the Serbs, analysts have noted, is motivated more by a desire to play the role of international powerbroker than by genuine solidarity with Slav brothers. But the Kremlin’s protective approach to the internationally vilified Serbs has engendered their trust, giving Russia an avenue for exploring diplomatic options that is closed to most Western mediators.

While media supportive of Yeltsin hailed his proposal as promising, the newspaper Izvestia disputed that view.

“Russia’s arguments are not likely to be taken seriously after the events in Chechnya,” the paper said, referring to Yeltsin’s brutal invasion of the breakaway southern republic in December. “In fact, Tudjman has done exactly the same thing that Yeltsin had been trying to accomplish in the North Caucasus, but with more skill and--most important--less bloodshed.”

The recent Croatian offensive to retake the Serb-occupied Krajina region has been aimed at restoring Croatia’s territorial integrity, as was Moscow’s bloody crackdown on rebellious Chechnya.

Yeltsin disclosed his proposal for a Moscow peace summit at a Kremlin news conference with carefully selected Russian media after the same inner circle tracked his return to Moscow from a spa in the suburb of Barvikha. The 64-year-old president had spent the past two weeks there after being hospitalized following a mild heart attack July 11.

En route to his Kremlin office, Yeltsin took an unannounced stroll across adjacent Cathedral Square--to the delight of tourists who were allowed by the usually thuggish presidential security guards to close in for photographs and handshakes and wishes for his good health. “I am resuming work today,” he told the throng of surprised well-wishers in the exchange recorded by state television. “I feel well.”