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Russia vows winter campaign against Chechen rebels
MOSCOW, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Thursday that Russia will seek to smash rebel resistance in Chechnya with a winter offensive targeting the guerrillas' military leadership.
Ivanov, visiting the Volga region city of Yekaterinburg, also said the army planned in the spring to cut its troop presence in the Northern Caucasus, which includes Chechnya.
"Special operations are being conducted right now in Chechnya, practically on a permament basis, and involving a large number of forces," Ivanov said.
"This winter we will seek to finish off the remaining bandit groups, and capture or destroy their ringleaders. This I promise you," he said in comments broadcast on Russian television.
Russian forces poured into Chechnya in October 1999, three years after a humiliating withdrawal which left the republic with de facto independence from Moscow.
The retreat left Chechnya awash with arms and politically unstable, and elected Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov proved unable to impose law and order in a republic where clan loyalties proved stronger than central control.
An incursion by Islamic militants into the neighbouring Russian province of Dagestan in August 1999 proved the last straw. Vladimir Putin, then prime minister, ordered Russian troops back into the province to restore Moscow's control, citing lawlessness and rampant hostage-taking.
INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM
More than two years later, the "anti-terrorist" operation has failed to capture leading rebel field commanders, and it attracted international condemnation over widespread reports of civilian casualties and human rights abuses.
Putin, now Russian president, has bristled at the criticism and said the West should thank Russia for its actions. He says Russia is battling in Chechnya the same sort of international terrorism that lay behind the September 11 attacks in U.S. cities.
Those attacks, and Putin's stalwart support for the subsequent "war on terrorism" launched by U.S. President George W. Bush, won the Russian leader a second hearing on Chechnya.
Despite retaining nominal control of the bulk of the republic, except its remote mountainous south, Russian forces suffer almost daily losses in hit-and-run guerrilla attacks. However, Ivanov said on Thursday that the rebels were worn out.
Consultations with an envoy of rebel leader Maskhadov could only concern how those whose hands were not "covered in blood" could take up a presidential offer of ending the struggle and returning to civilian life.
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