MOSCOW, November 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) -Russia, on Sunday, said it had dropped plans to withdraw some of its troops from Chechnya, instead are stepping up their operations after intelligence suggested that Chechen fighters were planning attacks on Russian targets along the lines of last month's theatre attack in Moscow.

"Over the past days, we've been receiving information that guerrillas based in Chechnya -- and not only Chechnya -- are preparing new terrorist acts," Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told Interfax earlier on Sunday, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"I have made a decision to interrupt plans to reduce the number of troops in Chechnya.

"Starting today, our military has begun a broad, tough but well-conceived special military operation across the whole of Chechnya."

Ivanov's announcement contradicted his own comments on Friday, when he said some of Russia's 80,000 troops in Chechnya would be withdrawn as planned, despite the October theatre siege in which 119 hostages died after being gassed by the Russian forces.

On Saturday, Moscow stepped up pressure on the United States to add Chechen rebel groups to its terrorist blacklist, describing the issue as a test of the international coalition against terrorism.

According to the U.K. newspaper, the Guardian, Ivanov's switch in tone back to a hard line suggests that there continues to be strong resistance at the top of the army and the Interior Ministry to any troop reduction.

Critics have accused officers of making money out of the war through illegal control of Chechnya's thousands of small oil wells, as well as through kidnapping Chechens on suspicion of being terrorists and releasing them for ransom, said the paper, adding that the number of Russian troops in Chechnya, as high as 80,000, which is far more per square mile than the 115,000 which the Soviet Union had in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Access to Chechnya by Russian and foreign correspondents is only permitted under the Kremlin's control, said the Guardian.

The U.S. news paper, Washington Post, quoted analysts saying they're baffled at the claim of a new, tougher operation in Chechnya.

"The statement suggests that there had been self-imposed constraints they've been operating under before in terms of military targets," said Robert Nurick, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research organization, reported the Washington Post.

"They've never suggested that before. I can't imagine what they are. If what it means is they're going to be less careful than before in who they go after, it's hard to believe this is going to be any more successful than what they'd been doing," he said, added the paper.