STALEMATE IN RUSSIAN-CHECHEN TALKS.

"Russian-Chechen negotiations have reached a dead end, since Moscow has refused to sign documents it previously agreed on!" Chechnya’s acting deputy prime minister Movladi Udugov has told the Monitor. A draft peace treaty, an economic agreement, and an agreement on the circulation of money in Chechnya had been worked out at meetings between Russian and Chechen delegations. But while Moscow argues that each of these documents should be signed individually, Djohar-gala is insisting on a simultaneous signing of the whole package. The stumbling block is the draft peace treaty. Moscow dislikes not so much the content of the document as its title, which the Chechen side categorically refuses to change. The dispute over terminology goes to the heart of the main conflict between Moscow and Djohar-gala. "We cannot and will not sign a peace treaty with a subject of the Russian Federation. It must have a different title. If it were called an ‘agreement on peace and accord,’ that would be more acceptable to us," the chairman of the Duma’s Committee on Nationality Relations, Vladimir Zorin, told the Monitor. Chechnya, by contrast, insists that it is not a "subject of the Russian Federation" but a sovereign state, and that it is, accordingly, perfectly able to sign an international treaty with its giant neighbor.

Maskhadov Names His Government.