Chechen Blast Questions Mount

MOSCOW -- As the death toll from a double suicide blast in Chechnya grew to at least 55, Russian officials on Saturday were desperately seeking to explain how the attackers got through several military checkpoints to bomb the pro-Moscow government headquarters -- the most heavily protected building in the capital.

Friday’s attack, which injured more than 120 people, raised new doubts about Moscow’s Chechnya policy, but officials vowed to press ahead with a referendum in the republic, due in March, to help decide its future.

Critics, however, questioned official claims that the Chechen conflict is over and that the republic is stable enough for a meaningful referendum.

After Russia’s unsuccessful 1994-96 Chechen war and more than three years of conflict since 1999, the pressure is on Russian President Vladimir V. Putin to demonstrate a victory. Determined to show Russians that life in Chechnya is normal, he has dismissed the idea of peace talks with the separatist rebels who oppose Russian rule.

U.S. officials privately concede how difficult it would be for Russia to accept peace talks after Chechen rebels took hundreds of hostages in a Moscow theater in October. But some analysts doubt that the referendum is the right tool to resolve the crisis.

“The referendum is unlikely to bring about peace in Chechnya, simply because the main reasons of the war have not been removed,” said Alexander I. Zhilin, a Moscow-based military analyst. “There are still forces, both inside and outside Chechnya, that are financially and politically interested in the continuation of hostilities.”

Suicide bombers driving a truck and a military jeep charged the headquarters of the Chechen administration in the capital, Grozny, on Friday, causing two enormous blasts and reducing the building to a shell. Some reports put the number of dead at 57. Rescuers worked until dark Saturday but had found no survivors since Friday.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement Saturday saying that Chechen rebels are international terrorists and warning that the only way to fight terrorism is to “give up political stereotypes and double standards” -- a reference to Russia’s view that Chechen rebels should be hunted as vigorously as Al Qaeda militants.

Zhilin said the attack “testifies to the fact that the [Russian forces] do not control anything in Chechnya, not even their own HQ. If a couple of suicide drivers can stage a successful attack on a government complex, it means only one thing: There is utter disorder there.”

Viktor Kazantsev, Putin’s representative in the Caucasus, placed the blame on authorities in Chechnya.

“Those in charge of the security of the government compound did exceptionally badly. Carelessness was shown by many, from a rank-and-file soldier to high-ranking people,” he said, suggesting, without naming names, that a Chechen minister had been negligent.

Kazantsev insisted that if well-established security procedures had been followed, the attack could never have succeeded.

Chechen Prime Minister Mikhail Babich said investigators were looking into how the bombers managed to bring so many explosives into central Grozny. He said they apparently had no special documents or passes.

But Chechnya’s deputy interior minister, Akhmed Dakayev, offered a different version, suggesting that the two vehicles used by three kamikazes had military license plates and official passes and that the attackers were carrying identification papers, wore Russian military uniforms and did not look Chechen.

The strike against the most visible symbol of Moscow’s rule in Chechnya came after a series of headline-grabbing attacks by rebels, including the Moscow theater takeover and the downing of a huge Russian military chopper in August, which killed 119 servicemen.

The head of the pro-Moscow administration, Akhmad Kadyrov, insisted Saturday that the referendum would go ahead.

But Boris Y. Nemtsov, the liberal leader of Russia’s Union of Right Forces party, said the vote could not replace serious political negotiations.

“The authorities have profaned this idea and turned it into a farce. If the referendum is held in Chechnya’s current situation, if it is held at gunpoint and with acts of terror there on a regular basis, then who will believe the results and the legitimacy of such a referendum?” Nemtsov said.

“Moscow should stop the practice of incessant mopping-up operations that only generate terrorism,” he said, referring to blockades and searches of Chechen villages in which many civilian men have been detained by the Russians, never to be seen again.

“When a peaceful civilian is wounded in the course of a mopping-up operation or goes missing, 10 other people go into the mountains [to become rebel fighters]. This is why Moscow should start thinking about pulling the troops out,” Nemtsov said.

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Alexei Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.