Russians launch final assault

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, FEB. 11. Moscow shrugged off Chechen threats of an all- out guerilla war as Russian forces launched what they said was a decisive onslaught on rebel positions in the mountain.

Russia's main spokesman on Chechnya, Mr. Sergei Yastrzhembsky, on Friday dismissed a large-scale guerilla war announced by rebel leaders as propaganda.

On Thursday, the Chechen President, Mr. Aslan Maskhadov, said his forces were starting an all-out guerilla war against Russian troops throughout Chechnya - ``in the mountains, the lowlands, in every village, wherever we can.''

However, Moscow says rebels do have neither the strength nor people's support for guerilla warfare. ``The fewer forces the bandits have, the more steam they let out in a propaganda war,'' Mr. Yastrzhembsky told a news conference in Moscow.

``Maskhadov does not have the strength or the possibility to carry out a guerilla war and the main thing is that there is no support from the civilian population who are fed up with the rebels.''

Earlier, two most famous Chechen commanders, Shamil Basayev and Khattab, said they were launching a terrorist war against Russia as a whole. On Thursday, Chechen rebels ambushed a railway-repair and a military train in a Russian-controlled region of Chechnya, destroying two locomotives and damaging rails. It is the same kind of tactics Chechens successfully employed during 1994-1996, forcing Russians eventually to withdraw from the breakaway region.

Meanwhile, Russian commanders launched a final assault on guerilla bases in the Chechen mountains after pulling up an estimated 50,000 troops to the region. Last week Russian forces pushed rebels out of the Chechen capital Grozny, the last remaining rebel stronghold in the lowland part of Chechnya.

The head of the General Staff, Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, told Russian television on Friday that organised rebel resistance in the mountain had been broken after federal troops had taken control of two main gorges - Argun and Vedeno. The gorges were captured after Russians dropped 1.5-tonne fuel-air bombs for the first time this week.

``It now remains for the army to mop up mountains and destroy scattered groups of terrorists,'' Gen. Kvashnin said.

The General Staff on Friday revealed new Russian casualty figures in Chechnya, with 1458 troops killed and 4495 wounded since the start of hostilities in North Caucasus in August.

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