The security services are investigating the possibility that two recent explosions in Moscow are linked with the war in Chechnya, a spokesman for the Public Prosecutor's Office said Thursday.


Vladimir Nenashev, head of the investigation department of the prosecutor's office, said an explosion last week at the Lyublinskaya power station in southeast Moscow followed a mysterious telephone call to the police.


The caller, who said he represented Russian officers opposed to the war in Chechnya, threatened to blow up one building a week in central Moscow unless the fighting stopped and negotiations were started.


A second device exploded at the Metropol Hotel last Sunday. There were no injuries, largely because the blast failed to trigger a military mine planted in a third-floor suite.


"The blast in the Metropol Hotel could be considered as carrying out the threat," Nenashev said. "The mine was not the sort of device used by ordinary gangsters."


A spokesman for the Federal Counterintelligence Service, Sergei Bogdanov, said his organization was taking this theory seriously and that an investigation into an armed forces link had begun.