BRUSSELS -- Shifting gears, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher called Wednesday for recognizing the needs of Serbs and other ethnic groups in carrying out a negotiated settlement for Bosnia.


He said that would be one of the objectives of a conference Friday in London to implement the accord signed Nov. 21 near Dayton, Ohio, by Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia.


"It is clear the implementation of the Dayton agreement needs to be done with sensitivity to the needs of the parties and certainly that will be taken into account,'' Christopher said at a joint news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev.


Serbs living in suburbs of Sarajevo due to be put under Muslim control are angered by the arrangement and French officers responsible for security in the area have warned that forcing the Serbs to yield could lead to an explosion. British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind on Tuesday said some "practical measures'' could be taken without renegotiating the agreement set for signing Dec. 14 in Paris.


Christopher until now has dealt with Serb objections by insisting the accord initialed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, would not be revised.


His remarks Wednesday in response to a reporter's question to Kozyrev may signal the London conference will make adjustments in the peace enforcement plan without changing the text and annexes.


Kozyrev said "there is always room to accommodate legitimate concerns and problems.''


This could be done in London through the way the country is rehabilitated, the handling of refugee problems and in how a police force functions.


Serb discontent with the Dayton agreement has sparked fears of attacks on NATO troops policing the deal and fueled misgivings in the United States about participating in the peacekeeping mission.


The Senate postponed until next week a debate that had been expected to begin Wednesday on the deployment, while President Bill Clinton sent top military and diplomatic officials to Capitol Hill to try to keep the momentum behind the deployment from flagging.


As the U.S. Congress resisted the dispatch of troops, the German parliament on Wednesday authorized sending 4,000 soldiers for the mission.


It is the first time since the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia that German troops are being dispatched in large numbers to the region.


Members of the lower house of parliament, called the Bundestag, also expressed fears that Germans could be targeted by Serbs, but they said Germany could not stand idly by as troops from the other countries headed for Bosnia. The Bundestag voted 543-107 for the mission.


The opposition Social Democrats and even many members of the pacifist Greens joined Chancellor Helmut Kohl's three-party coalition in backing the deployment.


The first troops -- about 170 of them -- are to fly to Sarajevo on Thursday to help set up NATO's command center.