A senior Estonian official accused Russia of "pressure politics" on Thursday, while a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman charged that Estonia "is using any opportunity to toughen its position towards Russia."


The latest trading of accusations in the testy relationship between Moscow and Tallinn came the day after Russia set tough conditions for the pullout of its troops from the Baltic republic, virtually stalling negotiations on the subject.


Moscow demanded $23 million toward the resettlement of the estimated 2,600 troops in the republic on Wednesday and also explicitly linked the treatment of the thousands of Russian military pensioners in Estonia with the pullout.


"Disinformation is going on all the time," said Artur Laast, political counsellor at the Estonian Embassy in Moscow, in a telephone interview, referring to the 17th and latest round of negotiations between the two countries. "Every time we meet they bring in new corrections to points we have already agreed on," Laast said, terming Moscow's negotiating tactics "pressure politics."


Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Demurin told a briefing Laast had been summoned to explain "unfriendly" statements by his president, Lennart Meri, made in Hamburg last week in which he referred to Moscow's "imperial policy."


The Russian government had told Laast that "if the tendency toward exacerbating relations between our neighbor states is not changed, responsiblity for this will lie wholly on the Estonian side," Demurin said.


Estonian Foreign Minister Juri Luik, returning to Tallinn from a visit to Sweden, said his government would ask for international assistance to ensure the earliest possible withdrawal of the troops, Interfax reported.


The latest point of dispute is the $23 million which Moscow says the Estonians offered last year. Laast said he had been present when the Estonian ambassador to Moscow, Juri Kahn, had named that figure, but he said that Kahn had made it provisional on the troops being pulled out before Jan. 1.


The issue is likely to reverberate through all Moscow's dealings with its neighbors.


Asked if Lithuania, from where all Russian troops were withdrawn last year, was prepared to pay for the resettlement of the soldiers, Gintarat Jatkonis, press attach? of the Lithuanian Embassy, said: "Of course not, quite the reverse."


He said Lithuanian had helped build new homes for Russians in the Kaliningrad region, but that the question of some kind of compensation from Russia for the "occupation" of Lithuania might be raised in future talks between the two countries.


Relations between Estonia and Russia have been severely tested in recent months with a stream of accusations and counter-accusations flying between the two sides.


Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev accused Estonia of "ethnic cleansing" towards its large Russian minority, most of whom have not acquired full Estonian citizenship.


The two countries are also locked in a border dispute over parts of the Pskov region which belonged to Estonia before World War II.


The troop pullout is scheduled to be completed by Aug. 31, a date which Laast said he still hoped would be met.


"I think that after many political games and intrigues the troops will leave by that date or even earlier," he said.