Chechen separatists said Wednesday that the negotiations with Russia are a "farce" and broke off the talks as the southern Russian rebel province was looking more like a battlefield.
Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev went on Chechen television early Wednesday - with Russian tanks moving in on the outskirts of the Chechen capital Grozny to surround it and firing going on outside the city - and pronounced the talks "a farce.""It is inadmissible to conduct simultaneously with the negotiation process bombing of settlements," Dudayev declared.
As the Chechen negotiating team broke off talks on their third day, Dudayev said the Chechen population was prepared for war. "This is war to the death," he was quoted as saying by the independent Interfax news agency. "No other way is left to the citizens of Chechnya by the present regime in Russia."
President Boris Yeltsin has ordered the Russian army to regain control of the rebel republic - which declared independence three years ago and has mostly been ignored by the Kremlin until recently - and to disarm the militias scattered across the renegade territory.
Yeltsin's orders have met resistance on the ground in Chechnya and the neighboring provinces of Ingushetia and Dagestan as well as a substantial political rebuff in Moscow, even from Yeltsin's traditional allies.
The State Duma - which has gone on record in favor of a peaceful solution and where Yeltsin's biggest reform supporters have become his loudest critics on Chechen military intervention - appealed unanimously Wednesday to the Russian Orthodox Church and Chechen Muslims to help find a way to prevent further blood-shed.
Russian officials said that 11 servicemen have been killed and 20 wounded since Sunday's troop deployment with unknown casualties on the Chechen side.
Secretary of State Warren Christopher said Tuesday Yeltsin had been urged to minimize bloodshed. But Christopher said Chechnya is part of Russia and it was best to defer to Yeltsin's judgment in dealing with secessionists.