Chechens Given Deadline in Hostage Crisis

Russian troops closed in on cornered Chechen guerrillas in this frozen backwater Saturday, for the first time setting a deadline for surrender and backing up the implied threat with a menacing display of military muscle.

Russian authorities gave the Chechen gunmen until 10 a.m. today Moscow time to release their captives and turn over their guns.

The Federal Security Service director, Col. Gen. Mikhail I. Barsukov, did not spell out what would happen if the Chechens ignore the deadline. But he suggested that the Kremlin is ready to attack--even at the risk of harming the hostages--to end the embarrassing standoff.

Barsukov said he hopes that the Chechens “will make the right decision to save the lives of peaceful citizens,” the Itar-Tass news agency reported. And he vowed, “If even one hostage is shot, I will act immediately.”

Tass later reported that Barsukov offered the gunmen safe passage in a telephone conversation with the top regional official in Dagestan, who was in touch with the guerrillas. It quoted Barsukov as saying that once back in Chechnya the rebels might be able to benefit from an amnesty offer from the Russian government.

But in Saturday afternoon’s waning light, a federal attack appeared imminent as scores of tanks that have mounted a rumbling vigil for five days ground their way through icy mud toward the Chechen militants and their human shield of about 200 captives.

Federal soldiers set off smoke bombs that shrouded the armor stretching from this village to the neighboring hamlet of Sovietskaya.

Helicopter gunships swept the barren treetops to intimidate the gunmen who have been holed up and out of sight for more than three days.

Troops in battle gear also detonated charges beneath the few tiny bridges offering escape over Pervomayskaya’s frozen rivulets. Some explosions merely blasted dirt clods onto perimeter farm roads, leaving the sturdy earthen spans intact.

While Russian officers conducted their menacing maneuvers, the risks of a deadly attack became more apparent for all involved in the protracted standoff at this bleak outpost just beyond the border of Chechnya in the multiethnic republic of Dagestan.

Chechen gunmen trying to trade their hostages for safe passage across the border have said they are willing to die before surrendering to the federal forces. But any artillery storm by the surrounding Russian troops could kill many of the captives and damage already strained relations between the diverse communities in the Caucasus Mountains region.

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Dagestani leaders early Wednesday guaranteed the Chechen guerrillas safe passage to their homeland in exchange for release of more than 2,000 hostages the gunmen had grabbed a day earlier to demand an end to the war in Chechnya.

Most of those captives were freed as the guerrillas made their way toward the Chechen border.

But federal troops blew up a bridge leading into the rebels’ homeland and blocked their exit at this village within sight of Chechnya.

Many Dagestanis said that action by the federal troops undermined their credibility with local Chechens, who have not supported the rebels loyal to Chechen president-in-hiding Dzhokar M. Dudayev.

If Dagestanis die as a consequence of the Russian leadership settling a score with its Chechen enemies at Pervomayskaya, authorities here fear that even the uninvolved local Chechens could become victims of retaliation by grieving relatives.

Khusein Gamsadov and hundreds of other residents of nearby Khasavyurt pushed their way past police checkpoints to demand that the federal troops let the Chechen gunmen go in return for release of the hostages.

“We represent all of the peoples of Dagestan when we say this,” Gamsadov said. “It will be a disaster if the Russian troops start bombing.”

More than 60,000 Chechens are native to Dagestan, and tens of thousands of other Chechens live in this neighboring republic as refugees, adding to the indignation felt by other ethnic groups that their hospitality has now exposed them to danger.

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Amid the mounting tension, Chechen nationalists began feuding among themselves Saturday--their community split over how to respond to the hostage crisis.

One Chechen warlord, Aslan Maskhadov, said the prolonged standoff has “blackened the image of Chechens.”

In an interview with Tass, he warned that rebel leaders stubbornly clinging to their hostages will be tried under Islamic laws if they make it back to Chechnya.

The Chechen fighters brought here by guerrilla leader Salman Raduyev have offered to release the women and children among their captives as long as prominent Russian and Dagestani authorities take their place for the ride to freedom.

But with Russian public sentiments running feverish over this latest destabilizing incident, federal authorities are loath to be seen as bowing to Chechen guerrillas and may be less concerned about the fate of a few hapless hostages than the Kremlin’s commitment to restoring security.

President Boris N. Yeltsin has vowed vengeance against the Chechen gunmen for their second devastating attack and hostage-taking in recent months, and he signaled to a local leader pleading for restraint that the Kremlin’s patience had run out.

“We have nothing more precious than human lives, but bandits should not go unpunished,” Yeltsin was quoted as saying by Magomedali Magomedov, one of the Dagestani elders trying to ward off a cataclysmic showdown.

Yeltsin has been bitterly criticized for Moscow’s handling of the terrorist attack on the town of Budennovsk in June, when another band of Chechen guerrillas was allowed to escape back to Chechnya after a raid and shootout that killed more than 150 people.

Political rivals have been calling for an attack on Pervomayskaya to root out the insurgents who have terrified all of Russia.

Gen. Alexander I. Lebed, who has already announced plans to challenge Yeltsin in June’s presidential election, wrote a front-page newspaper article blaming the debacle on an incompetent administration. The state has proved itself incapable of coordinating its various agencies to attack a grave problem, he wrote.

After blasting Yeltsin’s leadership in print, Lebed boasted that he could free the hostages himself, given command of Russian troops.

Promising to “take responsibility for the lives and safety of the people,” Lebed told the Interfax news agency that he would be ready to fly to the region immediately and take control.

Neither the Kremlin nor the Chechens responded to his offer.

Raising a voice for peaceful negotiations, the Kremlin’s own human rights advocate, Sergei Kovalev, said Russia’s first priority must be saving the hostages.

“Unfortunately,” he acknowledged, “many other people have a different priority--revenge and punishment for what is a very grave crime. This is a perverted scale of priorities.”

While the massing Avars, Dagestanis, Darghins and other mountain peoples of this territory urged the troops to ease their stranglehold on the Chechens and their captives, they seemed resigned to an inevitably bloody conclusion.

“What would be the point of keeping them trapped here for four days if there was a chance they would let them go back to Chechnya?” asked Ramazan Izavov, an Avar from Khasavyurt who claimed that tens of thousands more demonstrators were being prevented by police from joining them at the military checkpoints around Pervomayskaya.

“If they had let all of us through to protest, we might have made them realize the dangers.”

Times staff writer Stephanie Simon in Moscow contributed to this report.