Russia says strikes on Afghanistan possible

Andrew Kramer

Monday, May 22, 2000 | 9:03 a.m.

MOSCOW - Russia might launch air strikes against Afghanistan if that country continues its alleged aid to Chechen separatists, a senior Kremlin official said today.

Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the presidential spokesman for the Chechnya war, said Russian intelligence had learned that the Taliban, which rules 90 percent of Afghanistan, signed an agreement with Chechen envoys to assist the rebels by providing fighters and weapons.

"I wouldn't rule out the possibility of preventive strikes if a real threat to Russia's national interests develops," Yastrzhembsky said at a briefing.

"It's an entirely real possibility," he said.

Yastrzhembsky said that representatives of Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, Taliban officials and suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden had met in Afghanistan about two weeks ago and signed a protocol to send 70 to 100 Islamic mercenaries to Chechnya.

Bin Laden allegedly masterminded the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The United States later launched cruise missile attacks on suspected terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.

However, he denied reports by Russian news agencies today that Russian fighter jets had bombed a column of Afghan mercenaries trying to cross into Chechnya from neighboring Georgia.

Russian warplanes did attack and destroy a column of a dozen trucks in the key Argun gorge, which leads through Chechnya's southern mountains to Georgia, but the trucks carried local fighters, he said.

The Russian planes attacked the column Sunday near the town of Karo-Argun, he said.

Russian forces have occupied lowland Chechnya and are pursuing rebels in the mountainous south, where the terrain favors the insurgents. Moscow claims to have eliminated organized resistance, but bands of rebels keep attacking Russian positions and columns, sometimes inflicting heavy casualties.

There was no way to confirm the report of the attack on a convoy. Both sides exaggerate their victories and understate their own losses.

Yastrzhembsky also denied reports that rebels had seized the village of Zhani-Vedeno in the southern mountains and inflicted casualties on Russian forces there.

"Actually the opposite happened," Yastrzhembsky said. "On Sunday the artillery of federal forces inflicted a massive blow on a group of rebels in the Zhani-Vedeno area. Now the dead bandits are being counted."

Federal forces suffered no casualties, he said.

Russian news media also carried several unconfirmed reports that Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev had died of gangrene after losing a leg in a mine explosion earlier this year.

Yastrzhembsky said he could not confirm the report, but said evidence suggested Basayev is still alive.

A rebel spokesman quoted by the Interfax news agency said Basayev had suffered from gangrene but was cured by a second amputation on his leg.

Russian forces, driven out of Chechnya in a 1994-96 war, entered Chechnya in September after militants based there seized villages in the neighboring Russian region of Dagestan, and after about 300 people died in apartment bombings the government blamed on Chechens.