Fighting Imperils Chechnya Cease-Fire Meeting Canceled Amid Reports Of Russian Attacks

Fresh fighting in Chechnya imperiled a preliminary cease-fire Saturday, when Russian and Chechen military leaders canceled a meeting to work out technical details.

The truce was drawn up Thursday between Chechen clergy and Moscow’s administrators in the southern breakaway republic.

Though it was unlikely to succeed without the weight of top Russian and Chechen leaders, military representatives had planned to meet Saturday in neighboring Ingushetia to work out final details.

But a spokesman at Russian military headquarters in Mozdok, just outside Chechnya, said the talks never materialized. The spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, blamed Chechens but didn’t elaborate.

Earlier Mufti Magomed Aslambekov, the rebel republic’s spiritual leader, expressed skepticism about Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s call for peace Friday, a Muslim holy day.

“We need a week to see if the president really means it,” Aslambekov said. “They talk a lot but do little.”

A cease-fire last month held only four days, just long enough for the two sides to exchange prisoners and collect their dead.

The war began Dec. 11 when Yeltsin sent in Russian troops to crush Chechnya’s 3-year-old selfproclaimed independence.

Russian forces have resorted to artillery and rocket attacks to drive the rebels out of their southern and eastern strongholds, the tactic used earlier to flush out Chechen forces from Grozny, the capital.

There was evidence Friday of Russian mortar and rocket attacks on Samashky and Achkhoy-Martan, rebel-held villages about 20 miles east of the capital Grozny.

On Saturday, the Russian military command said it was concentrating artillery fire on two other rebel strongholds, Stary Atagy and Shali.

“There will only be peace when the Russian army leaves our territory,” said one rebel commander on condition of anonymity.

Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev also remains defiant.

“It’s more than certain that this will be a very, very long war and it will assume an ever wider geo-political area,” Dudayev said in a television interview earlier this week at his secret headquarters in Chechnya.