Not that this would mean very much, since Maskhadov is barely fighting.
Chechnya's Kadyrov says rebel leader Maskhadov prepared to surrender AP October 22, 2004
A top official and security chief in Chechnya said Friday that rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov is ready to give up his separatist fight and is seeking a way to negotiate with the Kremlin on his surrender, Russian news agencies reported.
Meanwhile, the Russian Interior Ministry said 532 of its employees had been killed in Chechnya this year, including 117 Chechen police officers, the Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies reported. The overall figure was up more than 28 percent, from 414 killed in 2003, ITAR-Tass said.
Newly inaugurated Chechen President Alu Alkhanov - formerly the region's top policeman - attributed the heavier losses to "stepped-up efforts to wipe out gunmen and terrorists," ITAR-Tass said.
The acting head of the joint Russian-Chechen police force, Oleg Khotin, said his troops and police had destroyed 129 rebels and detained 342, the news agencies said.
Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov said law enforcement agencies in the war-ravaged region have information that Maskhadov, who was elected president of Chechnya before the second war in a decade broke out there in 1999, is prepared to lay down his arms.
Kadyrov is trying to make contact with the federal government "in order to hold negotiations on how to disarm and surrender to the authorities," the Interfax news agency quoted Kadyrov as saying.
Alkhanov said that Maskhadov could be offered security from the point of surrender "to the investigator's office," Interfax reported.
"Naturally, he has a lot of enemies among those who have lost relatives and friends thanks to him and they could try to carry out revenge," Alkhanov was quoted as saying.
Kadyrov - son of Akhmad Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed Chechen president who was assassinated in a bomb blast in May - has said more than once in the past that government forces in Chechnya were close to capturing Maskhadov or securing his surrender.
Late last month, the outspoken Kadyrov, who also leads a security force in Chechnya, said that Maskhadov was believed to be surrounded in a small area in eastern Chechnya and pledged to capture him within a week. That did not happen.
Maskhadov was rebel military chief in the 1994-1996 war in Chechnya and was elected president in 1997, after Russian forces withdrew, leaving the region de facto independent.
He was driven out of power after Russian troops rolled back into Chechnya in 1999, and Russian authorities accuse him of at least indirect involvement in most of the terror attacks outside Chechnya that have been tied to the rebels in recent years.
Kadyrov said Maskhadov hopes one of the regional leaders in Russia's North Caucasus, which includes Chechnya, would act as a middleman in talks with federal authorities, Interfax reported.
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