Defense Minister Pavel Grachev vehemently defended himself Tuesday against accusations of involvement in last week's killing of investigative reporter Dmitry Kholodov, amid new calls for the general's resignation.


In extensive interviews published by two of the most influential Russian newspapers, Izvestia and Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Grachev said the reporter's murder by an explosive device hidden in a briefcase had been a provocation against the minister.


"Of course, his murderer will not be found," Grachev told Nezavisimaya Gazeta editor Vitaly Tretyakov. "It was a political murder, but not in the sense that a journalist who knew some political secrets was killed. Its aim was to get rid of Grachev."


Grachev also said Kholodov had been used in a campaign to discredit him, and that the journalist had lied in his reporting about Grachev's involvement in corrupt dealings in the Western Group of Armies, until recently stationed in Germany.


Denying all the charges made against him by Kholodov and many other Russian journalists since Kholodov's death, Grachev went on to rebut charges that had never been made. Addressing the purchase of two Mercedes cars for him with revenues from selling the Western Group's military hardware abroad, Grachev told Tretyakov that the luxury cars did not belong to him personally but to the Defense Ministry.


However, Kholodov had only claimed that the money had been allocated for the construction of housing for Russian officers leaving Germany and that the purchase of cars was illegal.


"That's what I'm for as minister and commander -- to decide whether we need it or not," Grachev told Izvestia, referring to the purchase of the cars.


Grachev earlier claimed that Kholodov may have brought from the war-torn Caucasus region the explosive device that killed him and injured another Moskovsky Komsomolets reporter last Monday.


"I still prefer to talk about it as the death of Kholodov rather than the murder of Kholodov," he told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. "The investigation has yet to prove the murder version."


Claiming he had known Kholodov as a mild-mannered man, Grachev told Tretyakov that he was sure the incisive stories he had written about corruption in the military were "not his hand, not his style. He was simply used."


But Pavel Gusev, the editor of Moskovsky Komsomolets, published a letter Tuesday from Kholodov's family that said Grachev was "spitting into the grave of the fallen journalist" in his attempts to justify himself.


The Public Prosecutor's office has started a libel case against Gusev at Grachev's request. But Grachev told Izvestia that he would resign if he saw that he had lost President Boris Yeltsin's trust.


The president has so far backed his defense minister to the full.