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Christus Rex Information Service
THE Chechen rebel leader, Gen Dzhokhar Dudayev, was killed in an "act of revenge" for the ambush of a convoy in which 90 Russian soldiers died, Moscow's military said yesterday.
According to military sources - and the Chechens - Gen Dudayev was blown up by a Russian missile while he was speaking on a satellite telephone in a field near the village of Gekhi-Chu.
The Interfax news agency reported that the missile, fired from the air, homed into the target by locking on to the telephone's radio signal.
The commander of Russian troops in Chechnya, Lt-Gen Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, had formally denied that Russian artillery or aircraft were in action in the area on Sunday night.
But the theory of Kremlin innocence became hard to support after the news agency Itar-Tass quoted a highly-placed source in the Interior Ministry as saying that Gen Dudayev, 52, was killed in a series of retaliatory raids against seven Chechen command posts.
The agency said it was the fifth time in the past three months that the Russians had locked missiles on to Gen Dudayev's telephone signal but the rebel had previously always ended his conversation before the weapon reached its target.
According to the Moscow television, Gen Dudayev was speaking on the telephone "with a Russian V.I.P.", probably a member of Eltsin's inner circle, about direct peace negotiations. This caused Gen Dudayev to lower his guard and not close the line in time, the way he had always done in the past. Intercepted, the telephone conversation allowed the Russians to launch two air-soil missiles targeting his Niva jeep.
A correspondent for Russian independent NTV, who visited the scene of Gen Dudayev's death, reported that it was clearly a "special operation" targeted at the rebel.
The correspondent said there were only two blasts, and no sign of any wide-scale rocket or artillery barrage.
Gen Dudayev suffered serious injuries to the back of the head and died shortly afterwards. His Niva jeep was thrown several yards.
According to his successor, the former vice-president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, he was buried yesterday morning in a rural cemetery in the south of Chechnya. In accordance with Muslim tradition, there was no major gathering at the graveside, and the site of the burial remained undisclosed last night.
Mr Yandarbiyev, who was vice-president of Gen Dudayev's self-proclaimed Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, said the rebel died in his bodyguard's arms.
His reported last words were: "Do not give up the cause we have begun. Continue to the end."
The new leader is seen as a "nominal figure" and is not known to enjoy strong support from either the Chechen tribes or the fighters. There are doubts that he will remain in control for long and some experts are predicting a civil war between the Chechen commanders.
In his first statement, Mr Yandarbiyev said: "The tragic death of the first president of Chechnya has not destroyed our people. We are ready to continue the struggle for independence."
MOSCOW (Apr 25, 1996 03:24 a.m. EDT) - Russian helicopter gunships attacked the town of Shali in rebel Chechnya on Thursday, killing and wounding civilians, Interfax news agency said.
The agency did not give a casualty figure for the air attack. But it said seven people were killed when Russian ground forces opened fire on a civilian convoy trying to flee the town, some 40 km (25 miles) northeast of the regional capital Grozny.
General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, commander of Russian forces in Chechnya, told Interfax the gunships had launched two "pinpoint strikes" against rebel Chechen positions in Shali.
He said the attacks were a response to rebel fighters firing on Wednesday at Russian helicopters which flew over Shali on a reconnaissance mission.
A Shali police official, quoted by Interfax, said the Russian attacks had caused considerable destruction. "People have been killed and wounded," he said.
The official said Shali had been sealed off by the Russian troops for six days.
MOSCOW (Apr 25, 1996 0:41 p.m. EDT) -- The dying leader of Chechnya's rebels urged his followers to fight to the death against Russia, his supporters said Wednesday.
Dzhokhar Dudayev, Russia's most wanted man, was struck in the head by a Russian artillery shell fragment and died in his bodyguard's arms, said rebels, who refused to show the body or the grave to outsiders.
Although not irrefutably confirmed, the dramatic news of the elimination of the top player in Chechnya's war against Russia left the 16-month battle at a turning point -- leading either to a breakthrough in peace talks or a new round of attacks by the rebel leader's successor.
President Boris Yeltsin played down the impact of the reported death, certain to come as good news in the final 7 1/2 weeks of his campaign for re-election, to which the Chechen war is a major obstacle.
"With or without Dudayev, we will wind up everything in Chechnya peacefully," Yeltsin told news agencies during a campaign stop in Russia's Far East on his way to China.
Russian officials said they wanted to see the body to verify the report, and the military denied involvement in the death.
But lawmakers and other officials, including an observers' mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in the Chechen capital Grozny, said they were convinced Dudayev was dead after hearing details from separatist leaders.
One of Dudayev's cousins, Ruslan Dudayev, told Associated Press Television he had seen the corpse and kissed it. He held an emotional memorial ceremony in his yard Wednesday in the village of Shalazhi, where Russian TV footage showed dozens of women weeping and men praying, chanting and crying.
The rebels moved quickly to regroup, reportedly naming second-in-command Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev acting leader and asserting they were unbowed.
"The struggle will be continued with tripled energy," Dudayev's representative in Moscow, Vagap Tutakov, told the Interfax news agency. "Supporters of the president of (Chechnya) have vowed to avenge his death."
Dudayev had eluded the Russians since Grozny fell early last year. The report of his death comes at a time of intensified Russian airstrikes against suspected rebel strongholds.
Yandarbiyev, who said he was selected to succeed Dudayev at a meeting of rebel leaders Tuesday, told ITAR-Tass that Dudayev was hit in the back of the head by a shell fragment and died in his bodyguard's arms Sunday.
Ruslan Dudayev told APTV his cousin was riding in a car when the attack occurred near Gekhi-Chu, about 18 miles southwest of Grozny, although that conflicted with other accounts that Dudayev was in a field talking on a satellite phone.
Shortly before he died, Yandarbiyev said, Dudayev urged his supporters and followers "not to give up our cause -- bring it to an end."
He said only Dudayev's close relatives had attended the burial, and they decided not to disclose the location.
As a martyr, Dudayev could become even a more powerful rallying symbol for his followers.
Yandarbiyev said he favors a peaceful settlement with Moscow. But it was not clear whether his approach would be different from Dudayev, who wanted peace only after Moscow withdrew its troops and acknowledged Chechnya's independence.
Since Yeltsin sent troops in December 1994 to crush the republic's independence movement, fighting has killed an estimated 30,000 people and devastated Chechnya.
The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Dudayev's vice president and reported successor as saying Dudayev was killed in a Russian airstrike Sunday.
Officials in Moscow said they were still trying to confirm Dudayev's death, and the Russian military denied any involvement in it.
Dudayev "was buried this morning in the presence of close relatives at one of the rural cemeteries in southern Chechnya," said Chechen vice president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev. Top Chechen officials said Yandarbiyev has succeeded Dudayev as head of the separatist movement.
Yandarbiyev would not say where Dudayev was buried, but earlier reports said it would be in Shalazhi, site of his mother's grave. Dudayev's burial followed two days of conflicting reports about his fate.
Dudayev's death would have major - though as yet unpredictable - consequences on the war in Chechnya.
His fighters could splinter, making negotiations with Moscow even more difficult. As a martyr, Dudayev could become a powerful rallying symbol for his followers, who have already said they will avenge his death.
However, peace talks had gone nowhere under Dudayev, and it was possible that a successor could emerge with new ideas.
The most wanted man in Russia, Dudayev had eluded the Russians since his capital, Grozny, fell early last year. His death comes at a time of intensified Russian airstrikes against suspected rebel strongholds.
Russia's military brass, who suffered a humiliating loss of more than 90 men in a rebel ambush last week, are largely ignoring an order by Yeltsin that combat operations cease except in cases of self-defense.
ITAR-Tass quoted one unidentified Russian Interior Ministry official as saying Dudayev was killed in retaliation for the ambush.
The first report of Dudayev's death came Tuesday from Khozh-Akhmed Yarikhanov, a former Dudayev peace negotiator who released a statement in Grozny saying he had seen the body.
The statement, carried by ITAR-Tass, said Dudayev was wounded Sunday in a Russian airstrike when he walked into a field to hold talks with a mediator by satellite phone. He died that night, it said.
The report also said a top aide to Dudayev and an unidentified "high-level guest" from Moscow also were killed in the attack near the village of Gekhi-Chu, 18 miles southwest of Grozny.
But many Russian officials and politicians insisted the reports were just a rebel trick. Some Russian officials said Wednesday they were waiting to see a body before accepting Dudayev's death.
Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev said on rebel television late Tuesday that the breakaway republic was observing three days of mourning for Dudayev, the Interfax news agency reported.
The military would not confirm airstrikes in the area on Sunday, but said planes were flying nearby. Villagers in Gekhi-Chu said Wednesday that they had not heard shelling for several days and knew nothing of Dudayev's fate.
"Federal troops have nothing to do with the death of Dzhokhar Dudayev," Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, head of Russia's troops in Chechnya, told ITAR-Tass Wednesday.
"Neither the aviation nor the artillery had carried out any combat operations near the settlement of Gekhi-Chu on the night of April 21-22."
Yeltsin, en route to a state visit to China, played down the impact of Dudayev's death.
"With or without Dudayev, we will wind up everything in Chechnya with peace," he told Russian news agencies.
But he added: "We must be on the alert, as the rebels may intensify their activity."
Dudayev's representative in Moscow, Vagap Tutakov, vowed Wednesday "the struggle will be continued with tripled energy."
"Supporters of the president of (Chechnya) have vowed to avenge his death," he told Interfax.
Dudayev, a former Soviet air force general who once flew strategic nuclear bombers, was elected president of the small Caucasus republic in late 1991 as the Soviet Union was falling apart.
He declared independence, beginning a standoff with the Kremlin that erupted into war when Yeltsin sent in troops in December 1994.
What Yeltsin expected would be a quick military campaign turned into a quagmire in the face of fierce Chechen resistance. The war has sapped Yeltsin's popularity, killed an estimated 30,000 people and devastated much of Chechnya.
Dudayev appeared periodically on local television in Chechnya and granted interviews to foreign reporters.
In a March interview with The Associated Press, Dudayev claimed the Russian president had recently ordered his assassination.
Dudayev turned 52 last week. He was born in 1944 and was one of hundreds of thousands of Chechens deported to Central Asia en masse by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin for allegedly collaborating with the Nazis.
The deportation fueled great hatred of Soviet authority among the already independence-minded Chechens, who had surrendered to Moscow only in the 19th century after decades of bloody warfare.
By The Associated Press
A MAN revered in France almost as a saint embedded himself even more deeply yesterday in a row over the veracity of the Holocaust.
Abbé Pierre's recent support for the historian Roger Garaudy, who disputes the figure of six million Jews killed by the Nazis, caused general outrage in France. Yesterday, Abbé Pierre replied by calling for a conference of historians and researchers to debate the whole issue and publish its conclusions.
"To forbid research into the worst crimes in history risks that the younger generation will wonder what certain people have to hide," he said. The debate should take place soon, "before it is too late" because of the death of survivors and witnesses.
The 83-year-old priest upset Jewish organisations and indeed most of mainstream historians by writing a five-page letter to his "dear friend of 50 years" Mr Garaudy, supporting his book Founding Myths of Israeli Politics, in which he rejects the "dogma of the six million".
Mr Garaudy also denounced the "lies of a Zionist mythology based on the political exploitation of exaggerated figures by a country that did not even exist at the time of the crimes".
An anti-racism organisation, MRAP (Movement contre le Racisme et pour l'AmitiŽ entre les Peuples), has issued a writ against him for "incitement to hatred and racial defamation".
Abbé Pierre had not read Mr Garaudy's book but was ready to back his friend to the hilt against accusations that he was "revisionist". He had been to Auschwitz, he said, and "on a plaque it says that four million died there".
He continued: "Since it was put up, the estimates have come back to one million. I am certain that figures were exaggerated in all good faith in the face of the horror of Nazism."
Later, Abbé Pierre said he knew his action would lead to his being labelled anti-semitic, but "when I see someone falsely accused I cannot keep silence".
The founder of Emmaus, a charity for the homeless, and a relentless crusader for the rights of the poor and under-privileged, Abbé Pierre risks losing his place on the committee of honour of the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism.
"If he does not retract what he has said in the coming days, the league will consider that he has excluded himself from the committee," said a spokesman.
Mr Garaudy is determined to "wage war on all fanaticisms" that are the "real detonators of all wars". His book completes a trilogy with The Christ of Saint Paul and The Grandeur and Decadence of Islam.
In this third book, he attacks the "myth of the justice of Nuremberg" and points out that the Jews were not the only ones to suffer in the war. This week, he said: "We have put a taboo on the Jewish question; the figures put forward are exaggerated, which in my opinion only reduces Hitler's crimes."
BEIRUT, Lebanon (Apr 25, 1996 0:17 p.m. EDT) -- Israel targeted roads and water installations Wednesday in its unrelenting bombardment of southern Lebanon, and Secretary of State Warren Christopher met Lebanese leaders in pursuit of a truce.
Christopher in Lebanon, Israeli warplanes, gunboats in action
Israeli warplanes blasted a water pipe feeding 23 villages, apparently trying to clear the 7,000 remaining inhabitants from the region where they have been hunting Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas for two weeks.
At the same time, Israeli gunboats kept up steady bombing of the coastal highway linking Beirut with the south, reducing civilian traffic and supplies on the 50-mile-long lifeline to a trickle.
U.N. spokesman Mikael Lindvall called the airstrikes "a war against the civilian population. They're the ones who're suffering ... People are being starved out."
Meanwhile, Hezbollah guerrillas fired 60 more Katyusha rockets into northern Israel, by the United Nations' count. Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, vowed to continue attacks against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon even if a cease-fire is declared.
Israel radio said several Katyushas had landed in the Galilee region, but caused no casualties or damage. There was no immediate word on casualties from the Israeli attacks.
At least 151 people have been killed, nearly all of them Lebanese civilians, since Israel launched the assault against Hezbollah on April 11. Another 320 have been wounded on both sides.
The casualty toll is the highest Israel has inflicted on Lebanon since its 1982 invasion.
In addition, about 500,000 Lebanese have been displaced and thousands of Israelis have fled their homes.
Christopher traveled Wednesday to Chtura in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon, roughly 30 miles from the battle zone, to try to boost the slow-moving U.S. mediation effort.
Addressing a news conference after meeting with Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, Christopher said "difficult problems remain" in the U.S. effort to achieve a cease-fire.
Despite Christopher's cautious remarks, President Clinton reported "encouraging news" after talks in Washington earlier with visiting Lebanese President Elias Hrawi.
And French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette -- Christopher's rival mediator in the Lebanon campaign -- told a news conference in Damascus he hoped for a cease-fire within 24 hours.
Christopher met with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Syrian President Hafez Assad earlier Wednesday.
A buildup of Israeli armor and troops was reported Wednesday along the border with southern Lebanon. Lebanese security sources said at least 50 Merkava tanks and 100 armored personnel carriers were deployed there.
During Wednesday's air raids, rockets exploded near a convoy of U.N. peacekeepers taking supplies to besieged villages and evacuating people southeast of the port of Tyre.
The rockets severed a water line near the village of Jouaya, cutting off supplies to 23 villages with thousands of inhabitants as well as three U.N. positions.
No one was hurt, but the rockets tore up the road, U.N. officers said.
On Tuesday, Israeli jets destroyed a water tank in the south, cutting off supplies to 22 other villages, apparently to force people still in the south to join the exodus northward.
The Israeli army repeated radio warnings to villagers to evacuate "because the military operations will continue."
Israeli jets also struck another road near Jouaya. A rocket exploded five yards from an armored U.N. vehicle, severely damaging it. However, the six U.N. soldiers inside were unharmed.
At the United Nations, Arab states asked the 185-member General Assembly to condemn Israel's attack and demand its withdrawal from the country.
Developing countries dominate the assembly and are likely to support the Arab nations when the resolution goes to a vote, probably Thursday or Friday. General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, unlike those of the 15-nation Security Council, which last week called for a cease-fire.
"It is high time for the hellish, vicious cycle of violence in the Middle East to be broken," Egyptian Ambassador Nabil Elaraby told the General Assembly.
Egypt has been an ally of Israel in the peace process, but Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek denounced the airstrikes Wednesday in a nationally broadcast speech in his country. Mubarek called the attacks an unforgivable sin.
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