Chechnya Policy Shift Possible, Putin Says

In his first meeting with a Western leader since he became acting president of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin told British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Saturday that changes are possible in Moscow’s policy on Chechnya.

Speaking after informal talks at a seaside palace outside St. Petersburg, Putin did not specify what the changes could be. Russia has faced months of international criticism over alleged human rights abuses during its war in the separatist republic.

“Tony Blair is concerned over the humanitarian side of the matter and observance of human rights in Chechnya, and it is important for the Russian leadership to understand what causes such a position . . . in order to correct our own policy,” Putin told a news conference. “The corrections are made after meetings like today’s.”

Russia has been reluctant to allow international groups into Chechnya since the war began in September. But Putin said Russian officials there are prepared to cooperate with groups including the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe and the United Nations. A Council of Europe delegation visited Chechnya on Saturday. Its leader, Frank Judd of Britain, said he was shocked by the devastation.

Putin took over as president when Boris N. Yeltsin stepped down in late December. He is the overwhelming favorite to win Russia’s March 26 presidential election.

Blair made a 24-hour informal visit to St. Petersburg, Russia’s imperial capital and Putin’s hometown, at Putin’s invitation. The two took an hour and a half out from their largely cultural itinerary to discuss Chechnya, terrorism, Russia’s economic troubles and its role in the international peacekeeping effort in the Balkans.

Afterward, Blair stressed the need for the West to maintain working relations with Russia. “There is a great desire to see Russia engaged with the rest of the world,” he told the news conference.

He insisted that his visit, coming while fighting is still raging in Chechnya, did not mean Britain supports the war.

In Chechnya, battles raged on Saturday in what has become one of the bloodiest phases of the 5-month-long war, despite Russia’s announcement this month that its forces had all but achieved victory.

The Chechen rebels’ Web site denied Russian reports that top guerrilla commanders had been killed and quoted one of them, the Arab-born Khattab, as saying Russia would soon find out how “dead” guerrillas fight.

In Chechnya’s south, Russia’s Defense Ministry said, a group of rebel fighters had broken out from the key Argun Gorge into the Vedeno region near the villages of Ulus-Kert and Selmentauzen, where there has been a fierce weeklong battle.

Video footage of Komsomolskoye in lower foothills farther north showed aircraft blasting a ruined landscape, while crack Russian troops made their way through the rubble.