MOSCOW — Right-wing demonstrators battled Moscow police Saturday in the most serious clash of Russia's 13-day political crisis even as negotiators for President Boris N. Yeltsin and his parliamentary opposition reached a tentative agreement aimed at settling their standoff.
The accord would set a two-day schedule for the reduction of armed forces confronting each other at the Parliament building, where legislators have been barricaded in defiance of Yeltsin's Sept. 21 order to disband Parliament.
The negotiations were continuing into this morning at Moscow's historic Danilovsky Monastery, the seat of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexi II, the senior churchman who brought the two sides together.
But the melee across town at Smolenskaya Square, one of the busiest intersections in the city, was the strongest sign yet that current political tensions could degenerate into serious civil disorder. Another demonstration is scheduled for today.
Perhaps aware that a 500th anniversary celebration of the Arbat, Moscow's most historic street, would attract thousands of strollers to an open-air festival in the neighborhood, the right-wing organization Labor Russia called a demonstration of parliamentary support at the same spot.
Shortly after noon, security police tried to disperse the several hundred demonstrators with clubs; many fought back by dismantling a stage erected for the Arbat celebration and using its metal tubing as weaponry.
The protesters constructed barricades to shield them as they peppered police lines with bricks, rocks and bottles. Caseloads of Molotov cocktails were reportedly spotted by witnesses but remained unused, although the demonstrators set parts of their barricades afire.
Government sources said that 24 police officers and five demonstrators were injured in the clash, some remaining in critical condition at local hospitals. Parliamentary sources placed the figures at 60 demonstrators and 12 officers injured.
Alexi II acknowledged that the talks had been "complicated" by the clash.
"The negotiations are extremely difficult," said Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, one of three Yeltsin emissaries. "But we're prepared to work around the clock."
Saturday's tentative accord came against the backdrop of a continuing rhetorical war between Yeltsin and parliamentary leaders.
The president stopped at the Parliament building Saturday morning to chat with some of the thousands of government troops ringing the premises. Asked whether he would be willing to meet face to face with parliamentary leaders, he replied, "First there is a matter for the government prosecutor to deal with," referring to the killing of a police officer Sept. 23 in an encounter with opposition demonstrators.
For their part, Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi and Parliament Chairman Ruslan I. Khasbulatov, the president's most obstinate opponents in the Parliament building, suggested they would meet with Yeltsin only "as a citizen"--that is, if he resigns.
Making his own inspection tour of the Parliament grounds, Rutskoi asked one group of government police officers: "What laws have you come to defend? Yeltsin obeys no laws."
The agreement on reducing the forces around the Parliament building, known as the White House, must still be approved by Parliament. The lawmakers had scuttled a similar agreement Friday, prolonging the confrontation.
Under its terms, as described by Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, a cleric participating in the talks, the two sides would exchange information about the size and deployment of their troops and engage in a joint reduction of forces over the following two or three days.
The government would also agree not to press criminal charges against any White House defenders except those whose actions led to the injury or death of another.
At Smolenskaya Square, the barricades erected by the demonstrators stretched across the Garden Ring road, Moscow's central traffic route. About 300 to 400 demonstrators stayed behind the barriers, faced by 4,000 to 5,000 riot police wearing bulletproof vests, carrying shields and backed up by water cannon.
"Our goal here is to restore the (Parliament) in its rights and position," said air force Lt. Col. Vyacheslav P. Zasedatelev, who was directing the construction of barricades. "In response to our demands we see nothing but police clubs from the other side. This is their democracy."
Meanwhile, some of the police stood bored behind their shields, cadging cigarettes from passersby.
"Behind those barricades are heroes!" one elderly woman lectured a police major.
"Lady, there aren't any heroes back there," he replied genially. "Just a bunch of 17-year-olds drinking and high on drugs."
Throughout the afternoon the site attracted onlookers from the Arbat, a street of souvenir peddlers and boutiques and the site of a McDonald's restaurant.
