Accounts Differ Of Cease-Fire In Chechnya Russian Proposal Seen As Face-Saving Effort Before Final Push In Grozny
Will there be a cease-fire in Chechnya today? The answer is unclear.
The Chechen side said Tuesday there would be a halt in the fighting, while the Russians confirmed nothing and continued to issue ultimatums to their opponents.
A day after Russian Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin had called for a cease-fire and for limited peace negotiations, the Chechen justice minister met here with Chernomyrdin and emerged saying the two sides had agreed to end the fighting.
“An agreement has been reached on stopping the bloodshed on the basis of halting military action,” Justice Minister Usman Imayev said. “It is possible to say that the shooting will stop from tomorrow evening.”
But Chernomyrdin spoke of no such agreement, the head of Russian counterintelligence labeled Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev a criminal and said Russia wouldn’t negotiate with him and a third Russian official predicted that Russian forces would take the Chechen capital of Grozny by the weekend.
The fact remains that Chernomyrdin’s conditions - insisting that the Chechens surrender their weapons and agree to remain part of the Russian Federation - are unacceptable to Dudayev and Chechen fighters. Chernomyrdin undoubtedly knows that, and his cease-fire proposal may be an attempt to show the West that he did everything he could before Russian forces make a costly, final push to take the Chechen capital.
In a statement issued by the Russian government Tuesday, Chernomyrdin was quoted as saying: “Dudayev and his entourage bear the entire responsibility for the continuing bloodshed and the multiplying number of victims. This is their last chance to prove their willingness to stop more bloodshed and show their real ability to control the situation.”
Meanwhile, Moscow continued hitting Grozny with air and artillery strikes, while a Russian military source told the Interfax news agency that the bodies of 1,160 Russian soldiers had been airlifted out of Mozdok, the chief Russian base in the Caucasus. That is more than twice as high as Russian officials previously have acknowledged. But the head of the Russian Parliament’s Defense Committee has estimated that more than 2,000 Russian soldiers have died.