Secret Visit to Chechnya Produces Plan for Peace

Russia’s new security chief, returning from a secret visit to Chechnya during some of the heaviest fighting there, announced an initiative Monday to end the separatist war and said he expects to gain more power to try to carry it out.

“There is no more important question in Russia than that of Chechnya,” retired Gen. Alexander I. Lebed declared after talks Sunday night and early Monday with the separatist rebel commander. “Chechnya is an open, bleeding wound. The bureaucracy must redouble its efforts to end the crisis.”

Lebed’s meeting with Gen. Aslan Maskhadov was the highest-level effort to stop the fresh outbreak of fighting since Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s reelection July 3. It came on the seventh day of a bloody rebel occupation of Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, which is nominally held by the Russians.

The two men agreed on the need for a cease-fire and separation of forces, Lebed said, adding that he had left Maskhadov and the acting Russian commander in Chechnya to work out details.

The talks between Lebed and Maskhadov--both Soviet army veterans--in the Chechen village of Stariye Atagi, though described by the security chief’s office as “very constructive,” did not dampen the battle for nearby Grozny. Russian helicopters fired rockets and machine guns into some of the city’s neighborhoods again Monday, and the rebels staged an evening attack on the main Russian base a few miles to the east.

Even so, Lebed’s surprise visit appeared to hold out hope for a breakthrough in the conflict, which has claimed more than 30,000 lives since Yeltsin ordered a December 1994 invasion to try to crush the tiny Muslim-led republic’s separatist aspirations.

Without yielding an inch on Moscow’s claim of sovereignty, Lebed offered words of respect for the separatists--calling them “good fighters” and “fine soldiers”--and some fresh ideas for resolving their differences with and relationship to the Kremlin.

Outlining what he called a Yeltsin-approved plan, Lebed told reporters in Moscow that a cease-fire would lead to the convening of a congress of all Chechen social forces, including separatist leaders, that would supplant Grozny’s Moscow-appointed puppet government and choose an assembly to rewrite the Chechen constitution. Lebed said Yeltsin had also drafted a decree granting him power to “direct and supervise” peace efforts in Chechnya, issue orders to Russian troops there and control all federal funds for the war effort and reconstruction.

Separatist leaders made no formal reply to Lebed’s proposals. But Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted one of them--unnamed--as saying Lebed had brought “a fundamentally new approach to regulating the conflict” that was worth considering.

Lebed said Maskhadov was agreeable to the idea of limited autonomy for Chechnya within the Russian Federation. But Lebed acknowledged that Maskhadov does not speak for the entire rebel leadership on that question.

The Chechen conflict is so intractable that Yeltsin was able to halt it for only a few weeks to remove it as an obstacle to his reelection. But Lebed, a 46-year-old former paratrooper and Afghan War veteran who said Monday he is “fed up with war,” appears to have brought new life to the peace process.

“Should hundreds of thousands of lives be sacrificed to achieve this Pyrrhic victory?” he asked. At another point, he said: “All wars, even if they are 100-year wars, end in negotiations. So why fight 100 years? Perhaps we should start with a negotiated settlement.”

Lebed’s visit had been awaited since his June 18 appointment as secretary of Yeltsin’s Security Council. But his decision to meet with the rebels was a surprise. He had previously insisted on dealing only with Chechnya’s puppet leader, Doku Zavgayev.

The separatists may have changed his attitude with their occupation of Grozny last Tuesday. They have now held the city longer than in any other incursion since Russian forces first drove them out in February 1995.

Zavgayev “is stranded in the airport, and it’s only that airport that is under his control,” Lebed sniffed Monday. “He does not control the situation, does he?”

Nor do Russian troops, Lebed acknowledged. He said he was shocked to find in Chechnya “puny creatures at [Russian] checkpoints--hungry, lice-ridden and naked”--overwhelmed by logistic and morale problems.

At least 7,000 federal troops in Grozny are besieged by as many as 4,000 armed separatists; the Russians are cut off from one another and running out of ammunition. Interfax reported that 180 Russian soldiers died in the past week. Rebel and civilian losses are unknown.

Adam Dzhantemirov, a 31-year-old carpenter, observed of the Grozny fighting: “There were helicopters shooting straight into our houses. You couldn’t put your nose out of the house for all the snipers.”

Boudreaux reported from Moscow, Bennett from the outskirts of Grozny.