xThe struggle for power in the North Caucasian republic of Chechnya has intensified and the region is on the brink of civil war, Chechen opposition politicians said Wednesday.


A spokesman for the opposition Provisional Council, Adnan Khutuyev, said the Shali Tank regiment, the only one in the republic, had broken with Chechen President @


Dzhokhar Dudayev and declared its loyalty to the council.


Khutuyev said that Dudayev's days in power were numbered: "He only definitely controls the presidential palace." He said there was a very real chance of violence breaking out because "the situation is very tense."


The Chechen president himself, who has held power for almost three years, told Itar-Tass in typically brash style that the reports of instability were a "lying propaganda campaign" instigated by Moscow. He said that the tank regiment remained loyal and he himself would take part in an oath-swearing ceremony for new recruits Thursday.


The small mountainous republic has descended into economic chaos and near anarchy since declaring independence from Moscow in 1991.


But Dudayev's adversaries have failed to form a united front and the opposition is itself deeply split on tactics and long-term aims.


The Provisional Council has appealed to Russian President Boris Yeltsin to recognize the council as the only legitimate authority in the country and to be the guarantor of "constitutional order" in Chechnya.


But Yaragi Mamodayev, another opposition figure who heads a Chechen "government of national trust" from exile in Moscow said Wednesday that the Provisional Council only had the support of "a few hundred people" in Chechnya and was not a broad-based national movement.


"They only represent themselves," Mamodayev said in an interview. He added that, according to his information, the tank division had not gone over to the opposition but "become neutral" while it waited to see which way the power struggle developed.


Mamodayev said the real threat came from Russia, which he believed was planning armed intervention in Chechnya on the pretext of "restoring order." He argued that the power struggle was being manipulated by politicians in Moscow who wanted to play the "Chechen card."


The Chechen Information Minister Movladi Udugov said last week that more than 200,000 extra Russian troops had been deployed recently in the North Caucasus military region to intimidate Chechnya.


Yeltsin's spokesman Anatoly Krasikov strongly ruled out the suggestion that Moscow was about to step in.


"We do not foresee any kind of physical intervention in the autono-mous republic," he said by telephone.


Krasikov said that there were "several centers of power" in the republic and that Yeltsin was not proposing to give its full support to any one of them.


The rogue element in this turbulent picture is the mafia-style businessman turned guerrilla leader Ruslan Labazanov. Once a supporter of Dudayev, who reportedly called him "my little bandit," Labazanov has declared war on his former mentor.


On June 13 the forces loyal to the two men fought a bloody street battle in Grozny. The Provisional Council said as many as 100 people died, most of them local residents caught up in the shooting.


Last week there were again reports of Labazanov launching an attack outside Grozny.


Dudayev, a flamboyant former Soviet airforce general, declared Chechen-Ingushetia, which then comprised one republic, independent from Moscow in September 1991. The following year Ingushetia chose to rejoin the Russian Federation, while Chechnya kept up its self-declared statehood. The republic has not been recognized by the international community.