Russian Lawmakers Demand Ouster of Official Over Bosnia : Kremlin: Duma votes 258 to 2 in favor of firing foreign minister because of NATO air strikes.

Lawmakers ganged up on Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev on Saturday, demanding that he be fired for allowing the West to run roughshod over Russian interests in the Balkans with its bombing of the Bosnian Serbs.

In an unusually united action, the fractious lower house of Parliament, the Duma, voted 258 to 2 to urge President Boris N. Yeltsin to sack his longstanding foreign minister. The deputies accused Kozyrev of emasculating Russia by failing to protect the Serbs, who share Russia’s Slavic heritage and the Orthodox Christian faith, from punishing air strikes by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The deputies’ resolution also called for immediate Russian withdrawal from NATO’s Partnership for Peace, the program aimed at incorporating the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics into the Western alliance.

While the Duma vote is purely advisory, the nearly unanimous condemnation of Kozyrev has made him a convenient scapegoat for Russia’s lack of clout in the war-torn Balkans in the event Yeltsin decides for political reasons that heads must roll.

There is little popular support in Russia for deeper involvement in the Balkan crisis, but as December parliamentary elections approach, it has become the hottest topic among politicians seeking to cast themselves as more patriotic and supportive of Slavic interests than those in power.

Communists, nationalists and even some reform-minded deputies have seized on the worsening crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina as evidence that the Kremlin has squandered Russian influence abroad by allowing the Western powers to take the reins in the crisis.

The intensified political grandstanding has pushed Yeltsin to toughen his stand against NATO. The president criticized the work of the Foreign Ministry during a news conference Friday--a hint that he might sacrifice Kozyrev to show resolve in recovering Russia’s former diplomatic glory.

Yeltsin condemned NATO’s use of force against the Bosnian Serbs as “impermissible” and warned that the alliance is risking war across Europe with its plans to expand its membership eastward.

Duma deputies had been in summer recess but gathered in the emergency session to respond to what they termed “NATO’s decision to unleash war in the Balkans.” In five hours of impassioned speeches, deputy after deputy lamented Russia’s evaporating influence on international affairs and squarely laid the blame on Kozyrev.

“We have no policy in Yugoslavia, and our impact on the situation there is close to zero,” insisted Vladimir P. Lukin, chairman of the Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky called not only for the foreign minister’s ouster but for criminal charges to be brought against him.

The Duma resolution also demanded that Russia unilaterally breach United Nations sanctions against the Serb-led rump Yugoslavia and called for an extraordinary session of the U.N. Security Council to censure NATO for “aggression in Bosnia, which has brought about massive destruction of the peaceful population.”

The resolution further instructs the deputies to take steps to legalize “voluntary” participation by Russian citizens in the Balkan war, clearing the way for mercenaries and paramilitary formations to fight on the side of the Serbs.