Kremlin’s Own Chechnya Conflict

Russia’s powerful and audacious security chief, Alexander I. Lebed, appeared to have lost his first major battle in the Kremlin on Saturday when President Boris N. Yeltsin rejected his demand that the hawkish interior minister be fired.

Lebed had issued his bold ultimatum Friday, telling a news conference that Yeltsin had to choose between him and the minister, Gen. Anatoly S. Kulikov, whom he accused of seeking to prolong the war against separatists in Chechnya.

The president made his choice within hours. After Kulikov offered his resignation later Friday, Yeltsin telephoned and asked him to stay on the job, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported.

Lebed was nowhere to be seen Saturday. How the impulsive security chief will react to the setback and how it will affect peace talks he has launched in Chechnya remain to be seen.

In any case, field commanders of the Russian and separatist armies agreed later Saturday on a cease-fire, formalizing an unofficial truce that Lebed arranged last week in the southern republic. But the 20-month-old conflict has a history of failed peace initiatives.

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The feud between Lebed, a retired general who became Yeltsin’s Security Council secretary two months ago, and Kulikov, who has prosecuted the Chechen war as a field commander and as interior minister, was inevitable; it pits against each other two military men whose views of the conflict could not be more different.

What made the showdown unusual was that Lebed, who is maneuvering to succeed the ailing Yeltsin, chose to make his challenge public, serving up the usually shadowy game of Kremlin intrigue to surprised television viewers.

Kremlin watchers said the public pressure made it all but impossible for Yeltsin to dismiss Kulikov, who had been reappointed to his Cabinet only a day earlier.

The president had already yielded to three demands from Lebed since the Afghan War veteran finished third in the initial round of presidential elections June 16. Asked to join forces with the incumbent to help beat his Communist foe in the July 3 runoff, Lebed demanded and achieved the ouster of his hated rival, Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev.

Since then, Lebed has won appointment of his own candidate as Grachev’s successor and persuaded Yeltsin to give him broad powers to settle the Chechen conflict.

Those powers put him at odds with Kulikov, who has scorned the peace process and called separatist leaders untrustworthy “medieval savages.”

Kulikov tried to make amends with Lebed on Saturday, inviting him to meet with his ministry’s staff.

He said Lebed’s peace process “inspires hope” and added: “I would not want personal ambitions to become an obstacle to a settlement.”

But Lebed stayed away from the meeting, sending a deputy instead.

“There is no sense in his [Lebed’s] going,” a Lebed spokesman said, “as there will be no serious discussion about Chechnya. . . . It’s a show to save Gen. Kulikov’s job.”

The spokesman said Lebed is not going to change his assessment of Kulikov, whom he has called “one of the main culprits in the Chechen tragedy.”

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Short of eating those words and trying to work with Kulikov, Lebed appears to face two choices: He can keep criticizing the minister, in public or private, hoping that Yeltsin will change his mind and fire him eventually, or he can walk away from his peace mission.

The newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets suggested that Lebed perhaps realizes the war cannot be ended and will “heroically wash his hands” of the assignment, leaving the blame with Kulikov.

For now, however, the guns are mostly silent in Chechnya, and the field commanders have agreed to hold talks today on how to disengage their armies.

Gen. Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen commander, and Russian Lt. Gen. Konstantin B. Pulikovsky reached their cease-fire agreement after four hours of talks in a tent near the Chechen village of Stariye Atagi.

Pulikovsky, who had balked at recognizing the informal truce arranged earlier, told reporters Saturday: “We have to cease fire; there shouldn’t be any more victims.” But later he launched a tirade, calling the separatists terrorists and criminals.

More than 30,000 people have been killed since Russian troops invaded Chechnya to oust a separatist-led government, and hundreds more died in a 10-day offensive this month that humiliated the Russian army and left the separatists in control of most of Grozny, the republic’s capital.

Maskhadov said he rejected a Russian demand that his triumphant troops retreat from Grozny. Instead, he has proposed to divide the nearly ruined city into “zones of responsibility.”

That may keep the rival armies too close for comfort. Hours after the cease-fire was signed, each side accused the other of scattered violations.

Times staff writer Vanora Bennett in Chechnya contributed to this report.