Chechen Rebel Leader Is Reported Slain

Russia’s official news agency said Tuesday that Gen. Dzhokar M. Dudayev, leader of Chechnya’s drive for independence from Moscow, was killed in a Russian air attack near his mountain headquarters.

The report, citing a Dudayev aide and a communique by his separatist government-in-hiding, stirred grave concern in Moscow that the brutal conflict that began when Russia sent troops into the region 16 months ago has taken a perilous and unpredictable turn. But as of early today, no other source had confirmed it, and two other aides insisted their leader was alive.

Dudayev, a 52-year-old retired Soviet air force general, ran a self-declared independent Muslim republic for more than three years until the Russian army ousted him from Grozny, the Chechen capital, at the start of a conflict that has claimed more than 20,000 lives and kept the Kremlin in a state of crisis.

His survival for more than a year as head of a clandestine army and Russia’s most wanted fugitive has been one of the mysteries of the war--one that deepened with Tuesday’s conflicting accounts.

Itar-Tass, the official Russian news agency, said Dudayev was killed Sunday night in a field near the Chechen village of Gekhi-Chu while speaking by satellite telephone to an unidentified contact trying to arrange peace talks with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin. An assistant died along with him, it said.

The agency quoted Khozh-Akhmed Yarikhanov, a onetime peace negotiator for Dudayev who is not part of his inner circle, as saying he had seen the Chechen leader’s dead body.

A written statement from Dudayev’s government, also quoted by the agency, described the bombing as “an act of terrorism,” declared three days of mourning and called on Chechens to “rally together” to a “victorious end.”

Khasan Khazuyev, one of Dudayev’s deputy prime ministers, dismissed the report as “an invention . . . designed to spread discord.” He told journalists in Istanbul, Turkey, that Dudayev telephoned him Tuesday to say he was “fine and healthy.”

Dudayev’s secretary, Saipudi Khasanov, told Interfax, an independent Russian news agency, that his boss “is alive and working as usual.” Neither man, however, offered convincing details.

Officials at Russia’s defense, interior and security ministries said they could not confirm Dudayev’s death. Yeltsin, who was visiting Russia’s Far East on the way to China, was informed of the report but had no comment.

Dudayev’s fate may become clear today, when Itar-Tass said he is to be buried in Shalazhi, a village not far from where he was reported killed.

In a March 17 interview with The Times in Shalazhi, Dudayev said he was convinced that Yeltsin’s Security Council had ordered his assassination but that he was determined to continue the war. After March 31, however, when Yeltsin announced an offer to hold peace talks, Dudayev softened his stand, saying he was willing to meet with a mediator.

But the conflict in southern Russia took an ugly turn last week when Dudayev’s guerrillas attacked an armored government convoy, killing at least 76 Russian soldiers and prompting the army to suspend Yeltsin’s cease-fire and troop withdrawal from Chechnya.

With Yeltsin’s peace initiative under siege from hawks on both sides and his reelection in June at stake, disinformation is a tempting weapon for both sides.

“The situation of uncertainty is extremely dangerous for Moscow,” said Konstantin N. Borovoi, a member of the Russian parliament who met with Dudayev last month to help persuade him to enter peace talks.

“If Dudayev is really dead, it would be wise to give the Chechens enough time to agree on their mutual interests and coordinate their actions,” Borovoi said. “Otherwise, there will be dozens of independent armies to fight with.”

Dudayev, who declared independence after his election as Chechnya’s president in 1991, has been viewed as a unifying and somewhat moderating force on the younger field commanders conducting the war.

But in the interview with The Times last month, he said his commanders “have made preparations so that in case of my death, [the Russians’] ordeal would increase tenfold.”