MOSCOW - Russian and Chechen separatist officials have called for top level peace talks to seek a stable political relationship after a spate of violence including fatal bomb attacks and the murder of an official. An emergency meeting in the Chechen capital, Grozny, between the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Mr Ivan Rybkin, and the Chechen First Deputy Primp Minister, Mr Movladi Udugov, produced a joint call for President Yeltsin and President Aslan Maskhadov of Chechnya to meet as soon as possible.
A week ago, a bomb killed two people in the southern Russian town of Armavir. Another two people were killed and 20 were wounded on Monday when a bomb badly damaged the railway station in the spa resort of Pyatigorsk, also near Chechnya.