GROZNY, Russia, Feb 24 (AFP) - Acting President Vladimir Putin ignored the fact that his country had just wiped the Chechen capital off the face of the earth and was committing savage abuses against civilians there, promising that Chechnya had a brighter future ahead of it if Russia wins the war and reoccupies the Muslim republic.
Russian soldiers said mujahideen were desperately seeking an escape route from their last redoubt deep in Chechnya's rugged southern mountains as warplanes continued to pound their positions.
Moscow meanwhile was preparing to host the latest Western visitor coming to Russia with Chechnya on his mind. The Council of Europe's human rights chief Alvaro Gil-Robles was to arrive to insist on verifying the true facts about Russia's brutal five-month advance through Chechnya.
Putin showed no signs of pandering to his latest visitor, but did extend the vague promise of "talks" with unspecified Chechen leaders, and promised not to leave Chechnya battered and broken after he had achieved his military aims.
"There are forces with which we can hold talks," the Interfax news agency quoted Putin as telling the Baltika radio station while on a visit to St. Petersburg. "The Russian army is not waging war on the Chechen people," he claimed.
Putin vowed once again to "destroy or crush the terrorists" but added that Moscow would restore friendly ties with the republic after the war. "We do not want to and have no right to drive a whole people into a corner, to make them feel as if they have been conquered," he said. "All social, economic and political questions will be settled peacefully around the negotiating table" after the campaign is over.
Russia has promised that the military campaign will end soon, "before the snow has melted" according to Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev. But there has been no sign of an end to the fighting yet, as warplanes continue to fly more than 100 sorties a day over the Shatoi region, where several thousand Muslim fighters are trapped by Russian forces.
The AVN military news agency claimed that Russia destroyed 15 resistance bases and six important supply routes overnight. The Chechen side, on its Internet site, said that 40 Russian soldiers had been killed in the settlement of Khal-Keloi.
Outside Grozny, one Russian officer said that having failed to break out of their impasse on the southern side and get into Georgia, some Chechens were now looking to break back into the Russian-held north and melt back into the local population.
"The fighters have dissolved out across the zone," he said. "There are loads of mountain paths and roads that you can go through. They have split up into groups of four or five and are trying to hide. Now they are trying to get away towards (the more northerly towns of) Urus Martan and Shali so they can turn back into normal civilians," he said.
Russia is keen not to let the mujahideen regroup in the southern mountains as they did during the previous 1994-1996 war, when they staged a stunning fight-back.
The Russians have cracked down on freedom of movement and sealed off the capital Grozny, though controls at the outskirts of the city appeared more relaxed on Thursday.
One officer, Konstantin, said that "Grozny practically does not exist in the direct sense. The army has blown up all buildings that were no longer any use and now you can see great piles of rubbish and whole wastelands in the center of town," he said.
He said that 20 to 30 people are arrested every day on suspicion of being mujahideen, but none of them was armed.
"The most important thing is to find the arms they they have left and hidden," he said.
Hundreds of suspected mujahideen have been channeled through a notorious detention camp north of Grozny at Chernokozovo, a name already synonymous with the beatings and torture which numerous former detainees have described.
Gil-Robles wants the Kremlin's new human rights pointman Vladimir Kalamanov to enable him to visit Chechnya to verify widespread reports of abuses during the Chechen campaign.
