Chechen separatists vowed to press on with their fight for independence after guerrilla leader Aslan Maskhadov was killed in what the Kremlin saw as a coup for President Vladimir Putin?s hardline policies in the region.?It is a very big loss but it is not a death blow to us, as Putin thinks,? said Maskhadov?s London-based envoy Akhmed Zakayev. He said a successor would be named within days.

Maskhadov, 53, one of Russia?s two most wanted men, was killed on Tuesday in an operation by the FSB security service in a village north of the Chechen region?s capital Grozny, officials said.

But some political analysts, who saw him as a moderate leader with whom the Kremlin could negotiate, said Maskhadov?s death was a blow to any chance of peace in the region.Zakayev, Masksshadov?s main envoy in the West, signaled the killing could trigger revenge attacks.

?Aslan Maskhadov will be much more dangerous for the Kremlin leadership in death than he could have been even in life, when he was calling for peaceful dialogue,? said Zakayev. Maskhadov had repeatedly invited Moscow to hold talks with him but the Russian leadership refused, saying it did not negotiate with terrorists.

<B>More dangerous in health</B>

?Instead of the weak argument that (the Kremlin) has nothing to discuss with Maskhadov ... there is now an overwhelming conclusion: there really isn?t anyone to negotiate with anymore,? said the Izvestia newspaper. Rebel field commanders Shamil Basayev and Doku Umarov were the most likely candidates to succeed Maskhadov as head of the self-proclaimed independent Chechen republic, said daily Kommersant.

?Both commanders, in contrast to Aslan Maskhadov?s declared desire for talks with Moscow, are well-known for their uncompromising and aggressive position toward Moscow,? the newspaper said. Maskhadov was elected president of Chechnya during a three-year period in the late 1990s when the region enjoyed de facto independence.

He distanced himself from many attacks Moscow accused him of engineering, instead blaming Basayev for raids such as Beslan, in which at least 330 people were killed, and a 2002 Moscow theater hostage-taking that resulted in 170 deaths. Basayev claimed responsibility for those attacks.

The Kremlin linked Maskhadov and Basayev to al Qaeda and other groups that conducted attacks elsewhere in the world such as the Sept. 11 raids on the United States in 2001.

Russia, fearing a breakaway by Chechnya could trigger secession drives by other regions in the sprawling federation, has fought two wars against Chechen separatists.

Tens of thousands were killed on both sides in the first conflict from 1994-96, when Maskhadov was commander-in-chief of rebel forces. Putin sent troops back into the territory in late 1999 to cement his image as a strong leader in the run-up to his election as president in 2000. A low-level war is still going on and takes Russian and Chechen lives daily.

<B>Sonia OXLEY</B>

<B>Moscow?s hated foe was once its peace partner</B>

■ The first Russian general who sat across a table from Aslan Maskhadov to talk peace thought he was dealing with a different kind of Chechen. Ten years ago, it was easy to tell Maskhadov ? who was killed by Russian special forces on Tuesday ? apart from the warlords, or ?field commanders? who loosely reported to him. At the time warlords grew thick beards, wore

ostentatious uniforms and oozed confidence. Maskhadov, a greying former Soviet artillery colonel who held the title of defense minister in the rebel government, was different. He wore plain Soviet battle dress, had no swagger and was clean shaven. He would pause with discomfort when he spoke in public, often so softly listeners had to strain to hear him.

At those first talks in February 1995, two other reporters and I could hear the exchanges of words outside the room at an airfield. Russian General Anatoly Kulikov told Maskhadov that military men like the two of them could stop the war. Three days later they signed a truce. It lasted a week, just long enough for both sides to collect bodies being eaten by dogs on the streets of the devastated capital of Grozny. Four months on, the Russians again sent a general to sit opposite Maskhadov. This time the truce lasted a few months. Maskhadov and Russian General Anatoly Romanov formed a ?special observer commission,? operating as a two-man team, flying together by helicopter to villages and towns to defuse crisis after crisis, ordering their men to cease fire. But then Romanov was blown up by a radio controlled bomb. Fighting resumed and Maskhadov returned to the mountains. I found him again addressing people in a snowbound village in the foothills months later, his discomfort with public speaking once again evident.

Russia was staging an election to install a pro-Moscow leader, which he saw as a violation of the truce. His rebels were attacking wherever they could to stop the vote, he told me. Without talks, there was no more truce, he declared. Two years later, Russia finally ended that war and withdrew. Maskhadov was elected president. Now sporting a neatly trimmed beard, he was invited to the Kremlin palace to shake hands with President Boris Yeltsin. But the de facto independent Chechnya he ruled was plagued by violence. When militants attacked villages outside Chechnya in 1999, Russia declared it was useless to talk to Maskhadov. It was a stance Moscow maintained until the end, angrily refusing to talk to the only Chechen rebel leader with whom it had ever seriously negotiated in the past. Maskhadov fled advancing Russian troops and remained in hiding for the next six years. Over the past two years, rebels carried out a number of deadly attacks on Russian cities ? the worst being a strike on a school in Beslan in which more than 300 people died. Russia said Maskhadov ordered the attacks. Maskhadov said he deplored them, but could not stop them without a political dialogue that would give him authority. «We think 30 minutes of honest eye-to-eye talks would be enough to end this war,» he said in his latest appeal for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin issued last week. On Tuesday, Russia security forces tracked him down in a village just outside Grozny and killed him.