Russian Envoy to Chechnya Escapes Assassination Bid : Caucasus: Four officials are injured in mine blast on Grozny bridge. Attack puts more political pressure on Yeltsin in upcoming elections.

President Boris N. Yeltsin’s personal envoy to the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya escaped an assassination attempt in the rebel capital Wednesday when a mine destroyed a bridge along the route of his motorcade and wounded four subordinates in another car.

The attack was the first against a high official on either side of the Chechen war since a July 30 peace accord, and it added tension to a deadlock that has halted the disarming of separatist guerrillas and the pullout of Russian troops.

With Russia’s parliamentary elections three months away, the continuing unrest and cease-fire violations in Chechnya are of growing concern to Yeltsin, who lost much of his popularity by starting the war and who wants no reminders that the conflict is not really over.

Yeltsin’s envoy, Oleg I. Lobov, was put in charge of the tiny southern republic a month ago with a mission to complete the disarmament, forge a political settlement and oversee local elections.

A longtime Yeltsin loyalist, Lobov is a deputy prime minister, secretary of the Security Council and a key planner of the Russian incursion in December.

Two remote-controlled mines packing 440 pounds of explosives went off under a bridge in Grozny, the Chechen capital, after Lobov’s car had crossed, Russian news agencies reported. The car behind Lobov’s vehicle was damaged by the blast, but it did not plunge into the Neftyanka River.

Among the four men wounded by shrapnel in that car was Nikolai Fedosov, the third-ranking Russian civilian official in Chechnya. He and a bodyguard were hospitalized.

The Itar-Tass news agency quoted Fedosov’s driver as saying he had traded his car’s license plates with Lobov’s vehicle the day before--a security measure that spared the envoy from harm. The republic’s top two Russian-installed Chechen leaders, traveling separately in the four-car motorcade, also escaped injury.

Chechen negotiators said rebels loyal to Gen. Dzhokar M. Dudayev, the separatist leader, had nothing to do with the blast, and no one claimed responsibility.

But Gen. Anatoly Romanov, the Russian military commander in Chechnya, called the attack and a subsequent fiery explosion at a Grozny oil refinery “links in the same chain” of pro-Dudayev provocations aimed at restarting the war.

Russian Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, who pushed his government into the peace talks and is heading Yeltsin’s party in the December elections, ruled out a resumption of attacks on Dudayev’s all-but-defeated army.

“We are being pushed to strike in retaliation, but we will not fight back,” Chernomyrdin said.

The peace process--set in motion by the July accord after seven months of fighting that killed more than 20,000 people--was in serious trouble before Wednesday’s attack.

Each side has accused the other of undermining the accord, which so far has resulted in the surrender of a few thousand rebel arms and the withdrawal of 8,000 of the tens of thousands of troops Yeltsin sent to Chechnya to crush Dudayev’s separatist movement.

Russian commanders, in a written statement Tuesday, said 30,000 guns are still in rebel hands. They said 26 Russian soldiers had been killed and 153 others wounded in cease-fire violations this month.

They announced that Russian troop withdrawals, which were supposed to proceed in tandem with rebel disarmament, will not resume until the last rebel lays down his weapon--a goal the commanders threatened to pursue with force.

Gen. Aslan Maskhadov, the top Chechen commander, said disarmament has slowed because the Russians no longer pay for weapons.

Rebels were also dissuaded, he said, by Russian air and artillery attacks on three Chechen villages in the past week--acts the Russians denied.

The Chechens ignored Wednesday’s deadline for a hand-over of tanks, artillery and other heavy weapons. Maskhadov said it was a protest against Tuesday’s “ultimatum” by the Russians.

Both sides said a joint commission overseeing the peace accord will meet today to try to break the deadlock.

Complicating the peace process is the lack of a political agreement on the status of Chechnya and of Dudayev, who was ousted by Russian forces from his presidential palace in Grozny last winter. The Russians broke off political negotiations more than a month ago, and both sides say local elections cannot take place in November as planned.

Dudayev has used his side’s equal status in the disarmament talks to press his claim as Chechnya’s legitimate ruler.