Russian military officials said they halted combat operations in Chechnya Monday as President Boris Yeltsin ordered, but separatist rebels showed no sign of wanting peace on Moscow's terms.
Gen. Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, commander of Russian operations in Chechnya, said he had given federal troops the order to cease fire just after midnight Sunday, in accordance with the peace plan Yeltsin announced earlier in the day.The Interfax news agency reported Monday that Chechen rebels attacked a column of federal troops near the guerrilla stronghold of Vedeno, killing 28 Russian servicemen and wounding 75 on Sunday.
The Russian defense and interior ministries in Moscow said they had no information on the attack.
Chechen forces are concentrated in the southeastern part of Chechnya and are unlikely to stop fighting as long as Russian troops are in the southern republic.
There has been no comment from the rebels since Yeltsin announced his plan, but past Russian peace moves have not induced
the rebels to lay down their arms.
Russia also seemed unlikely to halt all operations, and Tikhomirov said Russian troops reserved the right to open fire if attacked by rebel forces.
He said so-called "special operations" would be carried out against the rebels and that "the fighting with the gangsters will continue."
Yeltsin announced the plan to end the unpopular war to try to improve his chances for victory in June presidential elections. He is trailing Communist leader Gennady Zyu- ganov in the polls.
The Kremlin announced that Yeltsin signed a decree Monday to enforce the peace plan, which included a truce, a phased troop withdrawal, new elections and negotiations on Chechnya's status within the Russian federation.
Tikhomirov told reporters in the Chechen capital, Grozny, Monday that no troop pullout was planned right away. "The troops will stay where they are and conduct negotiations on peace," he said.
Yeltsin's plan stopped short of meeting rebel leader Dzhokhar Dudayev's main demands: full independence for Chechnya and a complete withdrawal of Russian troops from the breakaway republic.
"Without doubt, we will not put up with terrorist acts and we will respond to them adequately," Yeltsin said in taped remarks aired on nationwide television.
Yeltsin's plan did not appear to differ greatly from other proposals announced since Russia sent in 40,000 troops in December 1994 to quell Chechen separatists, and there was no sign the rebels intended to lay down their guns.
In Washington, the Clinton administration welcomed Yeltsin's move and prodded the rebels to reciprocate.
"Widespread and indiscriminate use of force has spilled far too much innocent blood and eroded support for Russia," Anthony Lake, President Clinton's national security adviser, said Monday.
"We welcome President Yeltsin's decision to begin withdrawing army units and intensify the search for a settlement," Lake said. "We call on the Chechens to respond in a similar spirit."
But Russian lawmakers of all political stripes were quick to criticize the plan.
Reformist legislator Sergei Yushenkov told the Interfax news agency the peace move was "clearly a belated and insufficient step," while presidential candidate Alexander Lebed branded it a "campaign fraud."
Zyuganov, the leading presidential candidate, said Yeltsin's proposals borrowed from past Communist initiatives but came far too late. "Negotiations should have been started . . . before the beginning of military operations in Chechnya," he said.
Thousands of Russian troops, aware a peace plan was imminent, have been pounding Chechen strongholds for weeks. On Sunday, they were said to be continuing large-scale operations in eight sealed-off mountain villages in the southeast.
Plans for these troops are unclear. Yeltsin said only the withdrawals would entail the movement of soldiers from the "tranquil" areas of Chechnya to outside its borders.