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Dudayev successor is staunch independence fighter

MOSCOW: Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, who has taken over as Chechen rebel leader after Dzhokhar Dudayev was killed in a Russian rocket attack, is a writer by trade and reported to be a hardline opponent of compromise with Moscow.

The rebels' military council said on Tuesday that Yandarbiyev, 44, who is vice-president of the self-proclaimed Republic of Ichkeria, is taking over from Dudayev.

Itar-Tass news agency said some top field commanders like Shamil Basayev, whose personal popularity among the separatists matches only that of Dudayev, had some doubts over Yandarbiyev's candidacy but decided to abide by Ichkeria's constitution.

Yandarbiyev was a member of the Soviet Writers' Union and worked as a consultant in its branch in Chechnya, Tass said, before switching to politics in 1990 as the Soviet Union began to crumble.

He founded the Vainakh Democratic Party to work for Chechen independence. The Vainakhs are an ethnic group to which the Chechens belong.

Yandarbiyev played a key role in forming the Congress of the Chechen People, a movement once warmly welcomed by the Russian parliament. The Congress ousted the Soviet-era local legislature and brought Dudayev to power in 1991.

Yandarbiyev was instrumental in rallying much of the Chechen people, traditionally fragmented into several clans, around Dudayev, experts say.

On August 1991, Yandarbiyev was detained by the KGB security police for an attempt to stage a rally in the capital, Grozny, against the attempted hardline coup in Moscow whose leaders temporarily isolated Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Tass said.

The coup was defeated by popular resistance led by the leader of the Russian republic, Boris Yeltsin.

In April 1993, Dudayev named Yandarbiyev his vice-president and made him his chief ideologue.

"He was, and by all accounts still is, a radical and firm supporter of Chechnya's independence," Tass said.

Russia's Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily described him as "an extreme radical", opposed to any negotiations with Moscow.

Yandarbiyev stood by Dudayev's side throughout the Russian attack on Grozny in early 1995.

Some media reports said Yandarbiyev, bearded and of medium height, was at the time number two on Russia's most wanted list after Dudayev. He habitually wears combat fatigues and never parts with his traditional Caucasian "papakha" lambswool hat.

He disappeared from the public eye after Russian forces took Grozny, destroying much of it, and went into hiding with other rebels in southern mountains.

Some unconfirmed Russian media reports said he had spent some time in Jordan, which has a big Chechen community. Foreign journalists who met Dudayev at his base earlier this month, said Yandarbiyev was with him.

Tass said Yandarbiyev is married and has two daughters.-Reuter