CHECHNYA ROUNDUP.

The OSCE’s Permanent Council has reversed its decision to sharply reduce the personnel of its Grozny mission, the Russian foreign ministry’s European cooperation department director Yuri Ushakov said yesterday. The decision to lie low had been made in response to recent threats and attacks on the mission building and staff, apparently by anti-Dudayev elements interested in disrupting the OSCE-sponsored negotiating process, and in removing the sole Western political presence. The joint armistice monitoring commission continues negotiations on a new venue for the Chechen political and military delegations, and is considering a compromise location on Grozny’s outskirts. Dzhokhar Dudayev’s chief political negotiator Khodzhakhmed Yarikhanov says that his side will return to full-fledged negotiations only with guarantees from the Russian side that there would be no more bombings of Chechen villages. Once negotiations are resumed, "they will last only until the next bombing," Yarikhanov said. Meanwhile Russian military intelligence claimed that the Chechen resistance has made plans to "plant bombs in apartment houses and kill people and cattle in order to make federal troops appear responsible." (6) Last week, the Chechens were said by Russian intelligence to have acquired combat airplanes and an airbase in Azerbaijan, and to be training pilots there.

Grachev To Appear In Court.