Russia rules out talks, tightens grip on Chechnya October 31, 2002 Posted: 22:41 Moscow time (18:41 GMT) Hot Topics: Chechnya » Military conflict in Chechnya. (TRJ)
MOSCOW - The Kremlin slammed the door shut on Thursday on peace talks to end Chechnya's decade-long conflict, vowing to destroy rebel president Aslan Maskhadov, once seen as the only separatist leader Moscow could talk to.
"We have to wipe out the movement's figureheads: Maskhadov, (Shamil) Basayev, and (Ruslan) Gelayev," Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the Kremlin's Chechnya spokesman, said of top rebel commanders.
In Chechnya, Russian forces stepped up "special operations" after last week's 58-hour seizure of a Moscow theater, hunting for separatist rebels with any link to the deadly attack.
Hundreds of Russian troops surrounded refugee camps in neighboring Ingushetia, along Chechnya's western border, witnesses told Reuters.
Moscow police said they had arrested a former guerrilla carrying a champagne bottle with 16 pounds of the liquid metal mercury, a tiny amount of which can be fatal if swallowed or inhaled.
"He has fought with Basayev, so we can suspect that he has not broken his ties with this field commander," police spokesman Filipp Zolotnitsky told Russian television. Police said they had no evidence directly linking the suspect to the theater attack.
Yastrzhembsky, Moscow's mayor and security officials displayed scores of explosive charges, grenades and bombs to defend the authorities' controversial decision to pump a powerful anaesthetic into the theater before it was stormed by the security forces.
Some 50 rebels died in the assault, but the gas also killed 117 hostages. The rebels had shot dead two other hostages, prompting the storming of the building.
LARGE AMOUNTS OF EXPLOSIVES
An official from the FSB, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB security service, said the rebels held at least 110 kg (243 lb) of TNT equivalent - enough to kill all the hostages and bring down the building.
After the theater siege, France and other Western states urged Moscow to talk with the rebels.
But Yastrzhembsky echoed President Vladimir Putin's long-standing rejection of any talks with "terrorists."
"Maskhadov can no longer be considered a legitimate representative of this resistance," he said. "From the Chechen underground there is no one we are ready to talk to."
Maskhadov, elected head of the separatist region after a 1994-96 war left Chechnya with de facto independence, was long the point of contact between the Kremlin and the Chechen rebels.
Last November, his top envoy Akhmed Zakayev was granted immunity to allow him to meet a Kremlin official at a Moscow airport - the only formal encounter in the second campaign between the two sides.
And the Kremlin, which ceased to recognize Maskhadov as president when Russian troops returned to the region in 1999, now links him to last week's hostage drama.
"Maskhadov was entirely aware of the operation and the tragedy has dealt a hefty blow to his reputation," Yastrzhembsky said after playing recordings of telephone conversations allegedly linking Maskhadov to the Moscow attack.
Maskhadov has distanced himself from the attack, offering his condolences to the victims' families.
In another blow to peace talks, Moscow secured the arrest in Denmark of Zakayev, who was in Copenhagen for a conference on Chechnya that Moscow says was deliberately planned to coincide with the guerrilla attack on the popular Moscow musical theater.
MAJOR MANHUNT
Officials vowed a major manhunt to track down those linked to the siege, including an alleged group of 100 suicide bombers holding Moscow resident permits.
They declined to say how so many armed guerrillas had been able to reach central Moscow undetected with assault rifles and bombs. NTV television said the arms may have been carried on a regular bus route between Moscow and Chechnya's capital Grozny.
News agencies reported sweep operations in Grozny and several other districts of Chechnya, whose long-running conflict has only hit the headlines periodically over the past two years.
Eyewitnesses told Reuters by telephone from Chechnya's border with Russia's Ingushetia region that troops were surrounding Chechen refugee tent camps there.
The authorities declined to comment on the reports.
But Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov dismissed any fears of anti-Chechen pogroms in the Russian capital.
"In Moscow we will not take any measures against Caucasians living here," he said. "It would be unjust, unfair and illegal." Reuters
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