RUSSIA/CHECHNYA:Two recent explosions, thousands of miles and seven days apart, spoke volumes about Russia's failing efforts to bring peace to Chechnya.
President Vladimir Putin rode to a landslide election win in 2000 on the back of his military's return to the Muslim republic, and a personal pledge to mercilessly crush the separatist rebels.
And four years and thousands of deaths later, with the military bogged down and accused of a litany of crimes - and despite an apparent paucity of ideas over how to pacify Chechnya - Mr Putin is set to dominate next month's presidential poll.
After an explosion on a Moscow metro killed 40 on February 6th, Mr Putin repeated a familiar mantra, blaming moderate rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov and rejecting international calls for a negotiated end to almost a decade of conflict. "We know for certain that Maskhadov and his bandits are linked to this terrorism," Mr Putin said. "Russia does not conduct negotiations with terrorists - it destroys them." Mr Akhmad Zakayev, a spokesman for Mr Maskhadov, denied Mr Putin's allegations and condemned terrorism.
Mr Putin offered no proof for his claim, only a peculiar justification for his refusal to countenance peace talks with a man elected Chechen president in a 1997 poll that international observers declared valid.
"The very fact that, after such crimes, people are calling on us to negotiate with Maskhadov, indirectly proves that the people who are making those calls are linking Maskhadov and his bandits with terrorism," he said.
In the hours after the subway explosion, no nation, publicly at least, urged Russia to talk to the fugitive Mr Maskhadov. But Mr Putin's reaction suggested the Chechen had not been far from his recent thoughts.
In visits to Moscow last month, US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell and French Foreign Minister Mr Dominique de Villepin pushed Mr Putin unusually hard to seek peace in Chechnya.
Mr de Villepin was most outspoken, saying of the region: "There cannot be a durable solution that relies on a simple security strategy. Only a just political process and striving for peace can lead to that, and end the suffering of civilian populations."
Russian Foreign Minister Mr Igor Ivanov stepped in when his guest spoke the plain truth that "Chechnya has been in a situation of open war for too many years".
"There is no war in the Chechen republic," Mr Ivanov insisted. "There is a very complicated process of political settlement being conducted against the background of fighting international terrorism."
Negotiations with rebels are unacceptable to Mr Putin, an ex-KGB agent whose popularity is based on a reputation as a man of action rather than compromise. His uncorroborated condemnation of Mr Maskhadov for the metro bombing made any talks even more unlikely than before. And, as the Kremlin ignores moderate rebel leaders, so a more radical Islamic element comes to the fore in Chechnya.
Mr Putin portrays discussions with the guerrillas as being as unpalatable to Moscow as talks with Osama bin Laden would be to Washington, and insists Russia was fighting international terror for years in Chechnya before the battle went global.
On February 6th, President Bush called the Kremlin with condolences and a pledge to step up their joint fight against terrorism. Some analysts here say Washington made good on that pledge exactly a week later.
Mr Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, briefly president of Chechnya before Mr Maskhadov's election, and of late the rebels' alleged financial linchpin, was blown up in his car returning from Friday prayers in Qatar, where he had lived in exile for three years.
Russia's domestic and foreign intelligence agencies rushed to deny responsibility for the blast, calling Mr Yandarbiyev a victim of an internal feud over cash flows that Moscow says can be traced in part to al-Qaeda.
Chechnya's rebels blamed the Kremlin for the assassination, which stunned Qatar, a country whose security record sets it apart in the volatile Gulf region. It also hosts a major US military presence, and defence analysts said it would be hard for a foreign intelligence service to operate there without US knowledge.
It is unclear who killed Mr Yandarbiyev but his death was welcomed in Russia, and hailed as just reward for the rebels after the carnage on Moscow's metro.
If the US has decided to give Russia carte blanche in its fight with Chechnya's separatists, there will be much more killing before the war there is resolved.