WASHINGTON -- Azerbaijan has rejected deployment of a peacekeeping force in Nagorno-Karabakh to end the six year-old war between Armenian and Azeri forces.


Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrossian said Wednesday in an interview during his visit to Washington that ending the war "depends entirely on a decision to deploy separation forces" between the combatants.


But Azerbaijan's ambassador to Washington, Hafiz M. Pashayev, objected, noting in a separate interview Wednesday that "all of these so-called peacekeeping forces would be on the territory of Azerbaijan," of which "almost 25 percent is already under occupation" by the Armenians.


Ter-Petrossian said the "separation force" would be largely Russian troops, to be interposed between Azerbaijan's army and the ethnic Armenian forces that have pushed out of Azerbaijan's Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.


President Clinton, meeting with Ter-Petrossian on Tuesday, said "the United States would not object" to the Russian troops' presence if "we had the right sort of oversight."


Ambassador Pashayev said his country's position is that a cease-fire negotiated in Moscow in May and formally extended July 27 should be followed by withdrawal of Armenian forces to the prewar limits of Nagorno-Karabakh, to be policed by a small international force of monitors from the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, not Russian troops.


"A Russian separation force is not a peacekeeping force, with not only a mandate to defend itself but also with a mandate to suppress violence," said retired ambassador John J. Maresca, until last year the U.S. delegate to the group that helped negotiate the cease-fire.


"I have heard of no other country willing to participate with the Russians on such a force."


Ter-Petrossian, speaking through an interpreter, said "only technicalities are left to be decided" on turning the current cease-fire into a "durable peace."


Then, he said, a second phase of talks under the cease-fire group's auspices could settle the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh, put under Azerbaijan's control by Stalin in 1921; the return of 1 million refugees; and "a corridor under international control or guarantee" to provide secure access between Armenia and the enclave.


The conflict erupted in 1988 and has caused at least 15,000 deaths.