Chechen rebels contact Russians for possible peace talks

MOSCOW -- Chechen rebel envoys have contacted Russian officials about possible disarmament talks, a Kremlin envoy said Thursday, in the first step toward peace negotiations in two years of war.

The tentative overture was announced just before President Vladimir Putin's 72-hour offer of talks -- his first such serious proposal -- expired. Putin had repeatedly rejected Western calls for a political settlement, insisting the rebels should be eliminated.

Kremlin envoy Viktor Kazantsev, appointed by Putin to oversee negotiations, said a representative of rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov approached his delegation in Chechnya. He provided no details.

"We have just barely started," Kazantsev said on RTR television Thursday from a plane to Moscow. "I'm not saying they're ready; they have doubts."

Kazantsev, who has been shuttling around Chechnya and nearby southern Russian republics since Putin's offer Monday, claimed that several dozen rebel commanders and fighters had "contacted" pro-Moscow Chechen officials. He did not elaborate.

"Discussions are under way. There will be a result, I am certain," he later told ORT television in Moscow.

His deputy, Nikolai Britvin, said in a interview from the Chechen capital, Grozny, that a small number of rebels had already surrendered, but did not say how many.

"The process has started and it will continue tomorrow and for some time," Britvin said.

There was no immediate response from the rebels.

Formidable obstacles remain to any peace settlement. The Russian military is desperate to avoid a repeat of its humiliating troop withdrawal at the end of the 1994-96 war in Chechnya, which resulted in de facto independence.