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Mistrust puts Chechen

talks into Jeopardy

MOSCOW: Attempts to negotiate an end to the 8-month-old war in breakaway Chechnya are marred by deep mistrust, a senior European diplomat brokering talks in Grozny said Friday.

The comments by the normally cautious Sandor Meszaros underlined the gloomy outlook for peace in Chechnya despite a July 30 accord that was widely hailed as a breakthrough toward ending the war.

No Chechen guns have been handed in and no Russian soldiers have left Chechen territory, as called for under the pact, said Meszaros, who heads the Chechnya mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. A promised exchange of all prisoners also is stalemated.

The atmosphere surrounding the talks "is still a problem - there is a lot of mistrust and a lot of things to be clarified," Meszaros told the Associated Press by telephone from the Chechen capital.

Attacks on Russian posts in the region continued unabated.

"Hardly a day goes by without some sort of clash," said Andrew Duncan, a senior defense analyst at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. "No one can pretend there's peace or that Russia has totally won.

Bitter mutual recriminations over the last week have soured the talks and turned the negotiating table inside the OSCE's small, stuffy headquarters into a verbal battlefield.

Russia's chief peace negotiator, nationalities minister Vyacheslav Mikhailov, hit out at Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev on Friday for refusing to disarm his troops as ordered by the peace agreement.

"This is a clear indication that a peaceful settlement is unacceptable to Dudayev," Mikhailov told the Itar-Tass news agency en route to the peace talks.

Chechen chief negotiator Khozh-Akhmed Yarikhanov complained angrily that his delegation was harassed at a Russian checkpoint on the way to talks for a second day in a row. He accused Russian forces of regrouping and preparing for a new offensive.

"The Russian side deliberately frustrates the implementation of the achieved agreement and the course of the negotiating process," Yarikhanov told reporters.

The commander of Russian forces in Chechnya dismissed the charge as "emotional," the Interfax news agency said.-AP