THE fate of the Chechen separatist leader, Gen Dzhokhar Dudayev, was uncertain yesterday after an aide said he had been killed in shelling, a report immediately denied by Gen Dudayev's secretary.
Mr Khodzh Akhmed Yarikhanov, a close aide to the separatist leader, was quoted by the news agency Itar Tass as saying Gen Dudayev (52), was killed in a shelling attack on Sunday night.
"Dudayev is dead, there is no doubt," said Mr Yarikhanov, adding that the separatist leader, who has led the 16 month war of secession from Russia, had been killed in shelling near the village of Gekhi Chu, about 30 km south west of the Chechen capital, Grozny.
Mr Yarikhanov said the Chechen separatist government had decreed three days of mourning to mark the death of their "president".
But minutes later, Gen Dudayev's private secretary Mr Saipudi Khasanov, denied that the leader had been killed, saying he "is alive and working as usual." And, according to Moscow Echo radio, Gen Dudayev's delegate in Moscow, Mr Vagap Tutakov said he had spoken to Gen Dudayev on Monday.
Russian government agencies and federal forces said they had no information on the alleged death of the separatist leader.
Moscow, which in recent weeks has combined a Kremlin peace formula with bombardments on rebel positions, stepped up its rhetoric against the separatists yesterday after a pro Moscow Chechen official was seriously injured in Grozny. The Russian Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, said Russian forces would continue to punish "terrorism", Moscow's euphemism for all separatist operations.
A vice premier in the pro Russian Chechen government, Mr Badrudin Dzhamalkhanov, was seriously injured and his two bodyguards killed in an attack yesterday near Grozny.
"No one has ever mentioned any restrictions in the struggle against terrorism, neither the head of the armed forces [Yeltsin] nor the government," Mr Chernomyrdin said.
Gen Dudayev's declaration of Chechen independence from Russia in 1991 ultimately triggered a Russian military intervention three years later that has left tens of thousands of people dead, most of them civilians.
. President Yeltsin, due ink China today for a three day visit, has said no political problems, exist in bilateral ties that have entered a new stage of understanding, Xinhua news agency said yesterday. "Our relations have entered a new stage of mutual understanding, trust and cooperation, and we have good reasons to regard such a relationship as a constructive partnership oriented toward the 21st century," President Yeltsin was quoted as saying.