Yeltsin’s Words Undercut New Chechen Truce

Struggling to pacify his own troops as well as those of the enemy, Russian security chief Alexander I. Lebed announced a new, more detailed cease-fire Thursday with separatist rebels in Chechnya, but hopes for peace were undermined again by criticism of him from President Boris N. Yeltsin.

The accord, due to take effect at midday today, followed a day of shuttle diplomacy in which the retired general, who has staked his powerful Kremlin post on ending the war, acted more like a mediator than the leader of the Russian side.

“We must stop this bloody bacchanal immediately, firmly and severely,” a stone-faced Lebed told reporters after signing the accord with the rebel chief of staff, Gen. Aslan Maskhadov, in the Chechen village of Noviye Atagi.

The agreement goes beyond the short-lived cease-fire Lebed achieved last week, as it spells out a plan for disengagement of the rival armies and their joint control of the southern republic’s embattled capital, Grozny, while talks on a political settlement begin.

Before returning to Moscow, Lebed said he would be back in Chechnya on Saturday with a proposal defining a semiautonomous status for the tiny republic, whose Muslim leaders seek full independence. “We will discuss it and sign it,” he said confidently.

Lebed’s latest mission to the war zone, his third in less than two weeks, marked a new turn in a fast-moving drama that began Aug. 6 with the rebels’ stunning recapture of Grozny from the Russian army that had routed them in early 1995.

Arriving in Chechnya late Wednesday, Lebed managed to call off a bombing counteroffensive that Russia’s overall troop commander in the region had threatened for Thursday to take back Grozny. Lebed called the commander’s ultimatum, which had been issued Tuesday over his objection, “a bad joke.” Maskhadov said Lebed “gave a guarantee that there would be no storming of Grozny.”

No one but Lebed, however, voiced expectation that the latest cease-fire would take hold. Russian news agencies reported a major clash in southern Grozny late Thursday.

As the accord was taking shape Thursday night, Russian television stations aired an interview with Yeltsin in which he criticized the paratrooper-turned-politician who became his Security Council secretary two months ago.

“One should remember that [Lebed] constantly promised to solve the Chechnya problem if he had power,” Yeltsin said. “Now he has power. Unfortunately no results can yet be seen as far as Chechnya is concerned.”

Yeltsin, interviewed in the Kremlin after a two-day visit to a possible vacation spot in northwest Russia, denied news reports that he would travel abroad for heart surgery but did not address the question of whether he needed such an operation.

“If I take my leave, I will spend it on Russian territory,” the 65-year-old president said, smiling, gesturing firmly and looking slightly more animated than the wooden leader who was inaugurated for a second term Aug. 9.

His evident illness in recent weeks has added more confusion to Russia’s already blurred lines of military command. And his criticism could further weaken Lebed, who has responsibility for Chechnya but no clear authority to fire disobedient generals who want to keep fighting there.

“No one has given anyone any power,” Lebed told reporters in Chechnya as he shuttled between military camps. “You simply have to take power, as I am quietly doing.”

A new lull in fighting Thursday came after President Clinton appealed to Yeltsin to call off the threatened counteroffensive and spare civilian lives. The rebels allowed food and water to be brought to Russian troops trapped in Grozny, and wounded soldiers were evacuated.

Almost 200,000 people have fled Grozny since the rebel takeover, leaving 120,000 civilians in the devastated city, according to Russian and International Committee of the Red Cross officials. Thousands have been killed, boosting a death toll of 30,000 in 20 months of war. A Russian official said 406 federal soldiers have been killed since Aug. 6 and that 130 others are missing and presumed dead.

Under Thursday’s accord, Russian and Chechen troops would stop firing, exchange dead soldiers and war prisoners and withdraw some troops from Grozny, the Itar-Tass news agency reported. Russian troops would retreat to Grozny’s Severny Airport and their Khankala military base east of the city. They would pull back from besieged rebel strongholds to the south in the Caucasus Mountains between Monday and Thursday, relocating to two villages closer to the capital.

While clear withdrawal routes and boundaries would separate the two armies, Grozny would be supervised by joint command offices--to be set up this afternoon--and by joint military patrols. Both sides renounced terrorism and agreed to a procedure of joint investigation of cease-fire violations.

Neither Lt. Gen. Konstantin B. Pulikovsky, the acting Russian commander who had issued the bombing ultimatum, nor Lt. Gen. Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, who reassumed his duties from Pulikovsky on Wednesday, commented on the cease-fire accord.

But Anatoly Shkirko, a lower-ranking general who commands Russia’s Interior Ministry troops in Chechnya, noted pessimistically that all previous cease-fires had broken down.