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Chechnya conflict deepens with new Russian drive
By Richard Balmforth
MOSCOW, Nov 3 (Reuters) - The conflict in Chechnya deepened on Sunday as Russia announced new action to snuff out what it said were rebel plans for "new acts of terror," while guerrillas shot down a Russian helicopter, killing nine servicemen.
Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov, speaking eight days after a bloody end to a mass hostage seizure in Moscow by Chechen rebels, said suicide fighters were being recruited in the breakaway region and new attacks were being planned there and elsewhere.
"From today the group of forces in Chechnya have launched broad-scale, tough and targeted special operations in all Chechnya's regions," Ivanov said.
Shortly after he spoke, further bad news from Chechnya hit the Kremlin with reports that rebels had shot down a Russian military helicopter, killing nine military personnel. It was the sixth such attack in five months.
Interfax news agency quoted Colonel Boris Podoprigora, deputy commander of Russian forces in Chechnya, as saying the Mi-8 helicopter had been brought down by a rocket fired from the edge of Chechnya's war-shattered regional capital of Grozny.
He said Russian forces had launched a sweep operation in the area and two separatist fighters had been killed.
Ivanov's tough language confirmed the Kremlin had slammed the door on peace talks to end the decades-long conflict in the Chechnya following the Moscow theatre siege that traumatised Russia.
More than 118 hostages, including several children, and most of the 50 rebels who seized them were killed when Russian forces gassed and then stormed the theatre on October 26 to end a three-day face-off.
HERALD TOUGH CRACKDOWN
Ivanov's words appeared to herald a tough crackdown.
But with Russian military sweeps already a regular occurrence in Chechnya, it was unclear what new action the Russian army could take. There was no immediate word from the breakaway region of any new crackdown under way.
Russian authorities enforce tough restrictions on reporting from Chechnya. Access by Russian and foreign correspondents is under tight Kremlin control, making it difficult to build up an accurate picture of events there.
President Vladimir Putin's tough stance in the hostage crisis, which spared the country humiliation at the hands of the rebels, won broad support from Russians.
But the rising death toll among hostages, virtually all of whom were killed by the gas used by special forces aimed at knocking out the guerrillas, has left many people deeply uneasy.
The affair has complicated the increasingly warm relations between Putin and some Western governments, many of whom have urged him to talk with the rebels while expressing support for his action in the hostage crisis.
In particular, Moscow is seeking the extradition from Denmark of Akhmed Zakayev, an aide to fugitive Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov, both of whom Moscow says were involved in the Moscow theatre hostage seizure.
Denmark says it needs more evidence before it can consider handing Zakayev over.
Ivanov, an old KGB comrade-in-arms of Putin and seen as close to the Kremlin leader, told reporters in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk that guerrillas were conducting recruitment campaigns in Chechnya to drum up what he termed "zombies" ready to fight for the independence cause.
"NIP THREAT IN THE BUD"
The new operations, he said in televised remarks, were aimed at "nipping the threat in the bud."
He added that Russia was temporarily suspending plans to cut its military presence in the rebel province.
His remarks appeared to foreshadow a military clampdown in the territory, where Russian forces have battled separatist guerrillas for most of the past eight years.
But, with Putin gearing for key meetings with European Union and possibly NATO leaders on November 11 at which Chechnya is likely to be a hot topic, Ivanov was careful to say that the operations would be "targeted."
Western governments in the past have voiced concern at massive use of Russian force in Chechnya and alleged rights abuses by the Russian army.
Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after 20 months of fierce fighting which cost thousands of lives. But Putin sent them back in again in 1999 after attacks in neighbouring Dagestan and after nearly 300 people died in bomb attacks on apartment blocks in Russian cities that Moscow blamed on the rebels.
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