Chechnya's rebel president Dzhokhar Dudayev has called the Russian negotiators in Grozny "hair-splitters" whose unconstructive attitude has doomed the peace process to failure. Truth is that this particular stage of negotiation relies on the splitting of hairs for its success.


Last weekend's rollercoaster of highs and lows in the talks demonstrated perfectly what is going on in Grozny, as the two sides attempted to agree on something, anything that they could sign.


First, on Friday, both sides emerged to say they were on the cusp of clinching an agreement to be sealed the following day. But then the Russian dove, Arkady Volsky, answered "Where else could they go?" to the question of whether he thought Chechnya would remain part of Russia.


Volsky's comment brought an avalanche of protest from the Chechen side, who just as firmly maintained that Chechen independence -- so long fought for -- was not up for negotiation. Ever. What Dudayev called hairsplitting was in fact Volsky naming the fundamental issue, Chechnya's political status. His temerity in doing so prevented a deal being signed Saturday.


But the sound and fury is disingenuous. Under dispute is a painstakingly vague formula to put off fighting at least until after elections in November without committing either side to compromise on Chechnya's status. It is what the British call a "fudge."


The fudge is required because the only thing on which the two sets of negotiators agree is that they need to stop fighting for a few months. Both sides are fully aware that they remain 100 percent unreconciled on the crucial issue of Chechen sovereignty.


The Chechens want to stop the war because they are in a militarily disastrous position. The Russians want to stop because Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and his Our Home Is Russia party do not want to fight December's parliamentary elections against a backdrop of war in Chechnya.


But how to achieve the necessary fudge without being accused of giving away the store? This is a troubling question for both sides, and the reason why every time the negotiators leave the talks they contradict in public what they have just agreed in private.


The failure to agree on the fundamentals is, of course, critical and will ensure that establishing peace in Chechnya remains a turbulent process or fails altogether. But that does not make the temporary solution now under discussion any less valuable -- it would stop the killing.


And once the tanks are still, the guns quiet and the helicopters grounded, who can say what compromises might develop that enable both sides to save face while reaching the solution that they should have found before the bloodshed even began?