TENSIONS EASE IN GROZNY.

Intermittent exchange of gunfiretook place August 3, but Interfax reported August 4 that tensionswere easing in Grozny and throughout Chechnya. (The standoff betweenRussian forces and six Chechen fighters continued in neighboringDaghestan, Russian radio reported.) On August 3 the negotiationscontinued in three working groups–on disarmament, prisoner exchange,and political questions respectively. Segodnya, on August3, held out little hope for immediate progress on political issues;it suggested that Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev had appointedhis new chief negotiator Khozhakhmed Yarikhanov precisely becauseof the latter’s well-known intransigence. And NTV reported August3 that "the Chechens do not feel themselves to be defeatedbut rather the reverse." Meanwhile, Russian negotiator ViktorVolsky told Russian radio August 4 that he had asked Yeltsin toban commercial banks from involvement in the reconstruction ofChechnya because so many of them were misappropriating governmentfunds sent to the region for that purpose. One thing that didnot change August 3 was the continuing absence of any news aboutthe fate of Fred Cuny, the American aid specialist who has beenmissing in the region since April 9.

Russian Cabinet Approves 1996 Budget.