YELTSIN WILLING TO MEET YANDARBIEV IN MOSCOW…

In separate but convergent statements yesterday, Boris Yeltsin and the OSCE’s Chechnya mission chief Tim Guldimann announced that the Russian president is ready to receive Chechen resistance leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiev for talks in Moscow soon. The talks are intended to relaunch the negotiations suspended last October on military issues, but will not include discussion of Chechnya’s political status. Yeltsin’s spokesman Sergei Medvedev said that Yeltsin guarantees Yandarbiev’s and his accompanying delegation’s security in Moscow. The apparent breakthrough follows Guldimann’s recent shuttle effort between the Kremlin and the Chechen resistance leadership. (Russian agencies, May 23 and 24)

…But War Has not Stopped.