Chechen Court Wants Yeltsin Beheaded, Rebel Leader Says

A renegade Chechen military commander said Saturday that a people’s court sentenced Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin to death for killing Muslims and civilians in the war with Chechnya.

Salman Raduyev, who operates outside the authority of Chechnya’s elected government, told a rally that Yeltsin is “a bloody enemy of the Chechen nation” who should be beheaded.

Raduyev, a hard-line rebel fighter who led a bloody hostage raid in Russia at the start of last year, said in Grozny he was “making public a verdict by the Supreme Sharia Court of the Caucasus” sentencing Yeltsin to death.

Yeltsin’s press service responded that Raduyev is a terrorist trying to derail peace talks.

“Such impertinence from a well-known and notorious terrorist is aimed at the disruption of dialogue between Moscow and Grozny,” the press service said.

The renewed tensions between Moscow and Chechnya are raising doubts about Yeltsin’s plan to visit the separatist Russian region next month.

Chechnya’s president said he would meet Yeltsin, who in 1994 sent tanks to try to crush Chechnya’s separatist drive, only to discuss the republic’s full sovereignty.

“Chechnya’s sovereignty and security guarantees to its citizens is not an issue for bargaining, which is ruled out here,” Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.

Under an accord signed earlier this year, Russia withdrew its forces from Chechnya and the rebels agreed to postpone a decision on the region’s political status by five years.

Meanwhile, in Moscow Saturday, Yeltsin appointed Farit Gazizullin as privatization minister and deputy prime minister, the presidential press service reported.

Gazizullin, 52, is filling a post that has been vacant since Yeltsin sacked Maxim V. Boiko after a political scandal involving book advance fees in November.