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Russia says talks with Chechens suspended
By Peter Graff

MOSCOW, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Russia, which has admitted to only two hours of peace talks with Chechen rebels in nearly two and a half years of war, said on Monday all contacts had been halted because the rebels had refused to surrender their arms.

The deputy to the Russian official who met a rebel representative at a Moscow airport in November, for the only peace talks since Moscow sent troops into the breakaway region in 1999, told Itar-Tass news agency no contacts were under way.

"(Rebel leader Aslan) Maskhadov does not accept the conditions laid out by the president of Russia," Nikolai Britvin said.

Britvin is a deputy to Viktor Kazantsev, Putin's representative for southern Russia, who met Maskhadov's envoy Akhmed Zakayev in November.

That meeting was the only publicly disclosed exception to Moscow's policy during its ongoing second Chechen war of holding no peace talks.

Russian troops, who swept into Chechnya in 1999, now control most of the territory and have installed pro-Moscow authorities. But without any parallel political process Moscow has notably failed to pacify the region or coax thousands of refugees home.

The rebels routinely kill Russian troops in mine attacks and ambushes, and assassinate pro-Moscow Chechen officials.

Tass said the bodies of a department chief of the pro-Moscow Chechen police and his nephew were found murdered on Monday.

One Russian special unit police officer was blown up with a mine at a checkpoint, Interfax news agency said.

Tass said a Russian helicopter had wiped out a group of six rebels in a rocket attack. Russian reports of rebel dead, like rebel reports of Russian dead, are not generally accurate.

TALKS NEVER GOT OFF THE GROUND

Putin had set the stage for the talks with rebels after the September 11 attacks on the United States, saying Russia was willing to discuss guerrillas' disarmament and reintegration into Chechen political life. But there was no second meeting.

Russia has long said that the rebels it is fighting in Chechnya are linked to Osama bin Laden and other international militants, and Moscow says its Chechen campaign is part of the U.S.-led "war on terrorism."

Putin's tentative initiative may have been intended to make Western leaders feel more comfortable siding with Moscow, persuading them he has not ruled out a political solution.

Western countries see Maskhadov, Chechnya's elected president, as a relative moderate and a legitimate partner for talks.

But with the beginning of 2002 Russia launched a new crackdown, closing roads and sealing off villages and towns so that its troops can perform mass arrests of militant suspects. Talks have again been ruled out.

"Those people, including the OSCE, who are talking today about the necessity for political dialogue with the insurgent leaders are either short-sighted or have ulterior motives," Britvin said.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe was the main mediator in lengthy peace talks during a first, 1994-96 war in Chechnya which ended with a Russian troop withdrawal that officials in Moscow now routinely describe as "treason."