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 | Monday, April 24, 2000, updated at 08:55(GMT+8) | ||||||||||||
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Russian General Against Talks With Maskhadov of ChechnyaA top Russian general said Sunday that he is against talks with Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov because that would mean a betray of the federal army.Colonel-General Gennady Troshev, commander of the Russian federal forces in the Northern Caucasus, told NTV television that his troops the breakaway republic are destroying rebel leaders Khattab and Shamil Basayev. He said the rebel ringleaders are concealing themselves in the Chechen mountains along with the remnants of their groups. "The task is to find and destroy them," Troshev said, referring to Khattab and Basayev. However, he said the federal troops would not seek to destroy Maskhadov, but "he cannot be seated at the negotiating table today. " He described Maskhadov as a "bandit" because of a statement he made recently. "Today we can say with pride that the Russians have not won. Our duty is to beat them. The main task is to weaken and stop them, and then begin a new war with them. They should be hammered day and night,every second," Troshev quoted Maskhadov as saying in the statement. If the federal authorities were to "sit down to the negotiating table with bandits, this would constitute treachery toward the army,"Troshev said.
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