MOSCOW -- In a secret foray into Chechnya, national security chief Alexander I. Lebed brought new life to hopes for a serious cease-fire in the breakaway republic of Chechnya.
At the same time, he launched a scathing assault of his own on the Russian handling of the 20-month-old war.
The tough-talking retired army general said he and Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen separatist military leader, agreed on negotiations for a cease-fire and for the withdrawal of rebel fighters from Grozny, the Chechen capital, which they overran last week.
Yeltsin's office issued a statement yesterday saying that Lebed's "proposals for settlement of the situation on the whole, received the Russian president's approval."
The former presidential candidate charged into the negotiations the day after being named the envoy to Chechnya, bringing a war veteran's realism and brutal candor.
The popular retired general's straightforward style in seizing the initiative and offering the rebel high command the respect of military men rather than "bandits" was a marked difference from Yeltsin's previous negotiators.
Even Lebed's critics suggested his bold jump was the closest thing to a real breakthrough in a long series of attempts at what never seemed to be an honest Kremlin effort to find peace.
The war has been a wrenching national tragedy, reminding Russians with every military defeat -- the death toll is more than 30,000 -- that the once great Soviet military was being humbled and humiliated.
Lebed said Maskhadov, the Chechen rebel military leader, and Gen. Konstantin Pulikovsky, acting commander of Russian troops in Chechnya, began talks yesterday afternoon by telephone.
His own secret meeting that started late Sunday and went into the early morning yesterday came in the midst of the worst fighting since the war started 20 months ago. Hundreds of Russian soldiers have died in the past few days trying to retake Grozny.
In a Moscow news conference on his return yesterday, Lebed heaped scorn on the Russian military and the Kremlin management of the bloody conflict, implicitly slashing at his own bosses, President Boris N. Yeltsin and Prime Minister Victor S. Chernomyrdin.
He called Doku Zavgayev a liar, saying the Moscow-backed head of Chechnya was powerless and suggesting he was responsible for the disappearance of millions of dollars in Russian money sent for the rebuilding of the Chechen capital.
