-Rebels celebrate

NATION/WORLD

The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 4, 1996 - 15


cautiously on
-ndependence
I On fifth anniversary of drive and will not declare
for independence, Chechen Movladi Udugov, t
spokesperson.
confidence growing "People are happy
there will some rel
sacrifices to comm

day

The Washington Post
GROZNY, Russia - Friday is the day most
hechens consider the fifth anniversary of the
ginning of their drive for independence from
Russia, and this year, for the first time in a long
while, there is good reason to celebrate.
On the streets of Grozny
nd in smaller towns, there
growing confidence that
n appallingly violent war
really may have ended rig t to
after 21 months and more l
than 30,000 deaths. A any way
se-fire is being widely
observed and Russian want, an
troops are withdrawing..
Best of all from the s OUIUd
Chechens' point of view,
they won. anyody
Emotionally and psy-
chologically, this place isRb
ripe for a victory blowout. Rebel
But secessionist leaders,
wary of provoking
.4 oscow, are doing all they can to convince peo-
le here that Friday actually should be a solemn
day of mourning the dead, with rejoicing kept to
a minimum. Military parades have been banned,
and declarations of victory are also frowned
upon. Local television has stopped airing partic-
ularly gruesome war footage out of concern that
it was stoking popular passions.
"The Chechen leadership has not, does not

People have a right
want, and it shouldn
The rebels have f
Moscow, the peace
month has come ui
forces who view it
rle have a
celebrate
they
d it
't insult
Movladi Udugov
Is' spokesperson

that it won a victory,' said
he rebels' politically astute
, so on the 6th of September
igious events, some animal
nemorate those who died.
to celebrate any way they
't insult anybody."
good reason for caution. In
plan hammered out last
nder fire from a variety of
as a Russian capitulation.
Any highly visible sign
of triumph in Chechnya
on Friday could irritate
already raw feelings of
humiliation. The rebels
are obviously worried
that the peace remains
far too tenuous to risk
undermining with a tri-
umphal celebration.
"We are not so stupid
as to put on a parade,"
said Udugov. "We don't
want to give Russia any
trump cards to whip up
nationalist sentiments.
We'll have time for a
parade 20 years from

.

AP PHOTO

Two elderly people discuss political parties in Chechnya yesterday.


now."
"We agreed to do everything not to excite cer-
tain people on both sides," Russian national
security chief Alexander Lebed, who brokered
the peace deal last month with his Chechen
counterparts, said in a Moscow news conference
yesterday.
Still, Udugov and the rest of the rebel leader-
ship will have their hands full restraining

Chechen guerrillas and civilians who are spoil-
ing for a party.
"The parties will go on for weeks," said
Ismail, a guerrilla who returned to his home near
Grozny, the Chechen capital, after months on the
front lines. "We have won our independence."
That is less than clear. The drive for indepen-
dence began here five years ago, while the
Soviet Union was in its death throes. But it had
less to do with the fall of communism than with
internecine divisions and centuries-old hostili-
ties with Russia.
It was on Sept. 6, 1991, that an anti-Soviet
mob stormed and dissolved the regional
Supreme Soviet, or parliament, in Grozny. The
Supreme Soviet's leader, Doku Zavgayev, fled.
The leader of the anti-Supreme Soviet forces, a

former Soviet air force general named Dzhokhar
Dudayev, was elected president of Chechnya
seven weeks later.
When Moscow called the elections fraudulent
and illegal, Dudayev responded on Nov. 2, 1991,
by declaring Chechnya independent of Russia.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin sent troops to the
region, but they were immediately confronted by
armed Chechens and forced to withdraw.
Politically, the standoff continued until
December 1994, when Yeltsin again sent troops
- this time 40,000 strong - to crush the inde-
pendence movement. That ignited the war that
has led to the destruction of much of Chechnya,
but also to the humiliation of Moscow's troops,
whom the rebels overran in Grozny a month ago.
Zavgayev, backed by the Kremlin but widely

hated in Chechnya, spends his days in Moscow
surrounded by a heavy contingent of body-
guards. The end of the war in Chechnya has
effectively put him out of a job, and he has com-
plained bitterly that the peace plan has handed
real power over to people he calls terrorists.
Although he dares not appear in Grozny,
Zavgayev still has a ghostly presence here.
Guerrilla leaders and international observers
both worry that his allies may try to disrupt
whatever events do take place here Friday.
Dudayev, killed by a Russian rocket in April,
now is seen as a martyr in parts of Chechnya.
Some people believe he is still alive, and a few
insist he will appear at Friday's events. Chechen
mothers are naming their babies Dzhokhar in his
honor.

Stocks rebound from early selloff for mixed finish yesterday

NEW YORK (AP) - Stocks rebounded from
an early selloff yesterday to end mixed as the lat-
est economic data was strong, but not so strong
as to aggravate interest rate jitters.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 32.18
to 5,648.39, bouncing back from an early 55-
point slide that pulled the blue-chip barometer
elow 5,600 for the first time since early August.
Broader measures recovered from the early
plunge too. But smaller and speculative issues
lagged blue-chip and large-company shares,

demonstrating the lack of resolve among
investors following July's rout.
"The tradition is that any dip is a time to buy,"
said Michael Metz, vice president of
Oppenheimer & Co. "But (investors) are doing it
nervously and sticking with the big stocks."
Stocks followed bonds lower in the morning
as last week's inflation worries were aggravated
b a published report suggesting the Federal
Reserve is primed to raise interest rates aggres-
sively following last week's worrisome signals

on inflation. Two weeks ago, the central bank
left its lending rates unchanged amid indications
tat economic growth was slowing on its own and
that inflation remained under control.
Calling it an "official leak," Metz said the arti-
cle in The Wall Street Journal "was deliberately
placed" to prepare investors and soften the blow
to the markets. "The way it was phrased, I can't
imagine that it was an uninformed speculation
by a reporter."
The Journal denied that the article was delib-

erately planted. "One reporter's scoop is another
reporter's leak," Bron Calame, a deputy manag-
ing editor at the newspaper, said in response to
Metz' allegation.
The market's early pessimism was compound-
ed by a big jump in crude oil prices amid the lat-
est turmoil in Iraq, which wil delay the expected
addition of new Iraqi supplies on the market.
But bonds rallied back later in the morning
after a widely wached survey of factory pur-
chasing managers broke last week's string of

surprisingly robust economic readings. The
National Association of Purchasing
Management reported that U.S. manufacturing
growth accelerated in August, growing for a
third consecutive month, but the increase was in
line with forecasts.
The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond - a
key determinant of corporate and consumer bor-
rowing costs -jumped as high as 7.14 percent
yesterday morning before dropping to 7.06 per-
cent after the purchasing managers report.


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