BALKAN BARRIERS TO PEACE REMAIN; RUSSIA RESISTING KEY NATO POINTS.

Byline: Roger Cohen The New York Times

The West and Russia agreed for the first time Thursday on the need for an international military presence in Kosovo to keep any eventual peace, but the composition of such a force and conditions for its deployment remained in dispute.

The agreement reached here by foreign ministers from the Group of Seven most-industrialized nations and Russia marked a decisive step away from the specter of a wider conflict over the Balkans between Washington and Moscow. It also intensified pressure on Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, by demonstrating that Russia is not ready to turn its back on the West to support him.

At the start of the 6-week-old conflict, a risk seemed to exist that Russian fury at NATO over the bombardment might lead to a severing of the carefully cultivated ties with the West that have grown since the end of the Cold War a decade ago. Milosevic clearly hoped for such a break.

After much patient diplomacy, that risk has now receded. But Thursday's agreement revealed enduring differences between the Western and Russian approaches to the conflict and appeared unlikely to bring a quick end to NATO's bombing campaign in Kosovo.

A statement issued by the ministers called for the ``deployment in Kosovo of effective international civil and security presences,'' and the ``withdrawal from Kosovo of military, police and paramilitary forces.''

These demands appeared as significant for what they left out as for what they included. Western ministers gave some ground by not calling explicitly for NATO participation in the ``security'' force, as they did at the NATO summit meeting in Washington last month.

Moreover, the statement did not explicitly call for the withdrawal from Kosovo of all Yugoslav forces, a demand backed by the United States but opposed by Russia, which favors some form of continued Yugoslav military presence.

President Clinton, who met Thursday with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, said the agreement was ``a significant step forward'' because ``this is the first time that the Russians have said publicly that they support an international security as well as civilian force in Kosovo.''

But what was meant by that security force appeared widely divergent in the minds of American and Russian officials. ``This must mean a strong military force with NATO at its core,'' said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. She said NATO had not made any concessions.

Russian Foreign MinisterIgor Ivanov insisted, however, that the force could not include NATO troops without the agreement of Milosevic, whose blessing for Alliance troops in Kosovo will not be easy to obtain. It was his refusal to agree to such a deployment that precipitated the bombing.

Officials close to Albright said that in private conversations, Ivanov had been more conciliatory on the question of NATO troops. ``The Russians understand that without a strong NATO presence, the ethnic Albanian refugees will not come home,'' one official said. ``They also understand that the Kosovo Liberation Army will never disarm unless NATO is there.''

Bombing to continue

This issue appeared likely to remain highly contentious. The furthest Milosevic has appeared to go up to now has been in some contemplation of acceptance of NATO troops that are not from the countries leading the air campaign - for example, Greece or Canada.

But that would never be acceptable to the United States, which wants ``NATO command and control of the mission,'' in the words of one official. It therefore seems inevitable that NATO bombing will continue or intensify in the foreseeable future, even as diplomacy inches forward.

``We need to stay with the strategy we have and continue to aggressively support our air campaign and aggressively support any diplomatic initiative that will secure the conditions necessary for a lasting peace in Kosovo,'' Clinton said.

The statement called for the ``safe and free return of all refugees and displaced persons,'' an agreement on ``substantial self-government for Kosovo'' that respected the ``sovereignty and territorial integrity'' of Yugoslavia, and the ``demilitarization'' of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the guerrilla group that has led the fight for the independence of Kosovo.

It added that the deployment of an international force should be ``endorsed and adopted by the United Nations.'' But while the West backs a Security Council resolution on such a deployment as soon as possible, it was far from clear that Russia would support it without first gaining the consent of Milosevic.

Officials said this basic difference over the timing of a U.N. resolution, and how it could be passed, reflected a fundamental divergence on how to end the war.

While the Western view is that a settlement eventually might be imposed on Yugoslavia, with the presence of Milosevic or perhaps in the aftermath of his downfall, the Russian view is that the only possible resolution lies in an agreement with the Yugoslav government.

Moscow therefore seems likely to resist any Security Council resolution that would open the way to an imposed solution. Germany, however, favors a quick Security Council resolution under Chapter Seven of the U.N. Charter which, unlike Chapter Six, does not require the consent of the parties to a dispute for the approval of military action.

Such problems suggest that progress could be slow. ``There is still a lot to be done before we can consider an interruption of the bombing,'' said Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister.

Efforts apear to be ongoing

Nevertheless, with a prolonged NATO campaign likely to make several European governments, including the German and the Italian, increasingly vulnerable, it appeared certain that diplomatic efforts led by Russia's special envoy, Viktor Chernomyrdin, would continue, possibly with a further visit to Belgrade within the next week.

``Our prToblems are different,'' said one senior U.S. official. ``The political need in Europe is to show that diplomacy is being pushed. At home, the whiff of diplomacy tends to make people nervous.''

Several members of Schroeder's Social Democratic Party have begun to question the wisdom of the bombing, and his junior coalition partner, the environmentalist Green Party, is split as it approaches a decisive congress next week. In Italy, where ties with Belgrade are traditionally warm, there is growing restiveness within the center-left government over NATO's actions.

Western officials said that, in the coming weeks, diplomatic attention would focus on the composition of any international force that goes into Kosovo, an eventual timetable for a Serbian withdrawal, how that timing would be linked to a pause in NATO bombing, and using Russia to press Milosevic to climb down.

But even as it seeks concessions from Milosevic, it is clear that the West also is contemplating a resolution that would involve his downfall.

U.S. officials said here they are giving ``a lot of help'' to the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, which is investigating a possible indictment of Milosevic. ``Nobody is going to lose any sleep if he is no longer in charge,'' one official said of Milosevic, adding that suggestions of an erosion of his authority included the recent placing under house arrest of several generals in Belgrade.

One of the many questions left unclear by Thursday's meeting was the extent to which Russia has been persuaded to view Milosevic as a central part of the Balkan problem - Clinton on Thursday accused the Yugoslav leader of ``the dehumanization, the delegitimization of the Muslim people, first in Bosnia and then in Kosovo'' - or whether Moscow still sees him as central to any peace.