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Dudayev wants direct

talks with Yeltsin

STOCKHOLM: Chechen rebel leader Dzhokhar Dudayev will seek direct peace talks with Russian President Boris Yeltsin to achieve a rapid end to conflict in Chechnya, the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter quoted him on Tuesday as saying.

The newspaper's Moscow correspondent quoted Dudayev as saying in an interview in his Chechen hideout that direct talks would be the best way to achieve peace as one brokered by mediators would be hard to enforce.

The correspondent reported that bombing and shelling was continuing in Chechnya. "All Easter Sunday there was bombing. During our night-time interview with Dudayev shooting and then artillery could be heard not far away," she wrote.

Yeltsin said on Saturday he had sent a telegram to Dudayev telling him military operations had stopped. On Monday a Russian military source told Tass that operations were continuing in rebel strongholds in the southeastern mountains.

"A rapid peace could be achieved in Chechnya if I personally get to negotiate with Boris Yeltsin," the daily quoted him as saying in the interview.

Dudayev said he wanted to negotiate directly with the Moscow leadership because he did not regard it as democratic.

"We consider it's all the same who is president of Russia... a coup d'etat has already been carried out. The country is now going to be led by communist and fascist forces. President Yeltsin no longer controls the real power structures - namely the army." Dagens Nyheter quoted him as saying.

Dudayev pledged that Russia could never beat Chechnya in a conflict. "Chechens have something Russians do not. A faith and a spiritual force that lifts them," he said.

Dudayev, in an interview broadcast on Monday on NTV Russian commercial television, said he was ready to talk about peace, but wanted to be sure that mediators could guarantee a deal was implemented.

"Whoever wishes to act as mediator should guarantee that any agreement which is reached is observed, no matter what that may be," Dudayev told NTV.

Yeltsin, stepping back from earlier deals, offered in a peace plan unveiled on March 31 to talk to Dudayev's forces through intermediaries.

Nationalities Minister Vyacheslav Mikhailov said on Monday Yeltsin would meet members of a newly appointed Chechnya commission and that some changes might be made to the plan, which has been marred by fighting.-Reuter