CHECHNYA TRUCE FRAGILE.

The truce continued generally tohold, but there was sporadic shooting August 5 and 6 between Russianand Chechen troops in various parts of Chechnya including Grozny,with at least one Russian soldier killed and several wounded,Russian TV and radio reported. The Russian supreme commander inChechnya, Lt. General Anatoly Romanov, warned that his forceswould not begin to withdraw, nor to release the more than 1,300Chechen prisoners the Russian side admits to holding, until theChechens present a complete list of Russian prisoners. But theChechen negotiators maintained that their side had long sincereleased almost all Russian prisoners, mostly to their families.General Dmitri Volkogonov, chairman of Russia’s commission onPOWs and MIAs, told a Moscow news conference that his list showed57 captured Russian servicemen. Over 300 are listed as MIA, and the remains of 307 soldiers have yet to be identified.

Russian representatives in Grozny continued to demand that Chechenpresident Dzhokhar Dudayev be barred from the envisaged presidentialelections. The Chechen delegates retorted that elections couldnot be considered truly democratic if Moscow dictated who couldor could not run for office. In addition to the conflicting interpretationsof the military agreement, a further disruptive factor emergedwith reports that Boris Yeltsin is about to appoint Oleg Lobovas Presidential Administrator in Chechnya. Lobov, the Secretaryof Yeltsin’s Security Council, is known as one of the initiatorsof the Chechya war. Critics of that war worry that Lobov’s arrivalin Grozny may jeopardize the peace accord, Moscow’s Echo radioobserved August 5.

Meanwhile there was still no information about the fate of FredCuny, the American aid specialist missing in the region sinceApril 9.

They Fail.