Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, speaking eight days after a bloody end to a mass hostage seizure in Moscow by Chechen rebels, said suicide fighters were being recruited in the region and new attacks were being planned there and elsewhere.

"From today the group of forces in Chechnya have launched broad-scale, tough and targeted special operations in all Chechnya's regions," Ivanov said.

Shortly after he spoke, further bad news from Chechnya hit the Kremlin with reports that rebels had shot down a Russian military helicopter, killing nine military personnel. It was the sixth such attack in five months.

Tough Talk

Interfax news agency quoted Colonel Boris Podoprigora, deputy commander of Russian forces in Chechnya, as saying the Mi-8 helicopter had been brought down by a rocket fired from the edge of Chechnya's war-shattered regional capital of Grozny.

He said Russian forces had launched a sweep operation in the area and two separatist fighters had been killed.

Ivanov's tough language confirmed the Kremlin had slammed the door on peace talks to end the decades-long conflict in the Chechnya following the Moscow theater siege that traumatized Russia.

Ivanov's words appeared to herald a tough crackdown.

But with Russian military sweeps already a regular occurrence in Chechnya, it was unclear what new action the Russian army could take. There was no immediate word from the Chechen region of any new crackdown under way.

President Vladimir Putin's tough stance in the hostage crisis, which spared the country humiliation at the hands of the rebels, won broad support from Russians.

But the rising death toll among hostages, virtually all of whom were killed by the gas used by special forces aimed at knocking out the guerrillas, has left many people deeply uneasy.

Seeking Extradition

The affair has complicated the increasingly warm relations between Putin and some Western governments, many of whom have urged him to talk with the rebels while expressing support for his action in the hostage crisis.

In particular, Moscow is seeking the extradition from Denmark of Akhmed Zakayev, an aide to fugitive Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov, both of whom Moscow says were involved in the Moscow theater hostage seizure.

Denmark says it needs more evidence before it can consider handing Zakayev over.

Ivanov told reporters in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk that guerrillas were conducting recruitment campaigns in Chechnya to drum up what he termed "zombies" ready to fight for the independence cause.

The new operations, he said in televised remarks, were aimed at "nipping the threat in the bud."

He added that Russia was temporarily suspending plans to cut its military presence in the province.

His remarks appeared to foreshadow a military clampdown in the territory, where Russian forces have battled separatist guerrillas for most of the past eight years.

But, with Putin gearing for key meetings with European Union and possibly NATO leaders on November 11 at which Chechnya is likely to be a hot topic, Ivanov was careful to say that the operations would be "targeted."

Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after 20 months of fierce fighting which cost thousands of lives. But Putin sent them back in again in 1999 after attacks in neighboring Dagestan and after nearly 300 people died in bomb attacks on apartment blocks in Russian cities that Moscow blamed on the rebels.

(China Daily November 4, 2002)