COMBINED REPORTS


GROZNY -- Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev made his first public appearance for more than a week Wednesday and said he was still willing to hold talks with Russia, stressing that the main goal now should be to end the war to stop the "senseless casualties."


Looking pale and drawn as he spoke with journalists in Grozny, Dudayev appeared more conciliatory than in the past. He did not set any conditions for negotiations and said only a negotiated settlement could end the war.


"There is no other resolution but a peaceful one," he said. "We were and still are ready for the fourth year now for peaceful negotiations, but Russia is trying to break through an already open door. No one knows why."


Dudayev had not been seen in Grozny for several days and Russian government reports said he had fled the city for the mountains in the south of Chechnya. One report last week, citing security sources, suggested that the general was dead.


His reappearance coincided with a partial lull in the fighting in Grozny, interrupted by spasmodic exchanges of fire, following a 48-hour cease-fire called by the Russian side Tuesday.


Dudayev, a former Soviet air force general who declared Chechnya's independence from Russia in 1991, said the key issue now was to end the bloody war.


"Only after you put out the flames can you see what remains and what you have to rebuild again," he said. "The issue now is to stop the military action and stop the senseless casualties from both sides, senseless casualties and senseless destruction."


But there was no evidence of peace in the battered Chechen capital. Heavy artillery shelling rocked the center and Russian and Chechen forces engaged in fierce fighting, shattering an uneasy calm that had prevailed early in the day.


One shell slammed into a building where a group of civilians had taken shelter from an earlier barrage. Six adults were killed and five children were injured in the explosion.


Dressed in camouflage fatigues and a military cap, a tired-looking Dudayev was flanked by heavily armed bodyguards as he spoke to journalists who were taken to a building in Grozny to meet with him.


His cabinet met earlier Wednesday to discuss the situation as Russian troops closed in on the Presidential Palace and other key installations in the center of Grozny. Once again, the informal truce that brought a lull in the fighting in the morning was brief.


"We told them (Russians) to collect their dead bodies to stop the dogs from eating them," said Arsan Ukayev, a colonel in the Chechen forces.


In Moscow, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry slammed the media for what he called "negative coverage" of the war.


Vladimir Vorozhtsov accused television and newspapers of spreading slander about Russian soldiers attacking peaceful citizens and raping women.


"There is no positive information about our troops, although they are fully carrying out their duties," he said.


President Boris Yeltsin, meanwhile, scheduled a meeting with Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and the speakers of both houses of parliament. Chernomyrdin was one of the prime movers behind Tuesday's short-lived cease-fire.


Yeltsin also called on Finance Minister Vladimir Panskov to revise the draft 1995 budget to take account of the cost of the Chechnya operation, officially estimated at 3 trillion rubles ($810 million).


Hundreds of Chechen fighters continued to hold their positions around the gutted Presidential Palace, the symbol of Chechen independence, and other key locations.


A Russian legislator, Ayvraz Lezdinsh, said in Moscow that at least 1,500 Russian troops had been killed in the conflict, Radio Russia reported.


A poll carried out by an international organization among 3,000 people across Russia found an overwhelming majority wanted the fighting halted immediately and the Russian troops withdrawn.


Only 4.2 percent of those polled by the International Sociological Research Center said attempts to subdue Chechnya should be continued.