PRESIDENT Yeltsin's unprecedented meeting with Chechen rebel leader Mr Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, scheduled for Monday is allegedly to be accompanied by a ceasefire.
However doubts already being expressed in Moscow about the effectiveness of the latest peace initiative in the troubled region of Chechnya.
The first inkling of problems to come was voiced by a leading Yeltsin aide, Mr Sergei Filatov, who yesterday, on the Echo Moscow radio station, reiterated the position that Russia would, under no circumstances, permit Chechen independence.
Those who did not support the peace process and who "continue to terrorise society" must, he said, either leave or be destroyed.
In this respect the peace moves appear similar to those at the end of March when Mr Yeltsin announced that Russia was to end hostilities forthwith. This was followed by a statement that independence for Chechnya must be ruled out the war continued with higher than average casualties.
On this occasion, however, there is one major difference. The original Chechen leader, Gen Dzhokar Dudayev, has since been killed. His replacement, Mr Yandarbiyev, while undoubtedly a hard line separatist, is not as universally supported by the disparate bands of rebel fighters on the ground.
His opportunities for compromise appear fewer, therefore than Gen Dudayev's, and even if a compromise were to be reached it is still far from certain that it would be backed by all, or even a majority, of Chechen units on the ground.
The talks are likely, all the same, to boost Mr Yeltsin's campaign with only five weeks left before Russia's voters go to the polls in the first democratic presidential election since the dissolution of the USSR.
Previous experience, however, indicates that this boost could be short lived, with a return to bloodshed likely at any time. This was a point Mr Yeltsin's opponents dwelt on in their election statements yesterday.
His main rival, the communist candidate Mr Gennady Zyuganov, told the Interfax news agency "I cannot believe the meeting will be a success. He who unleashed a war cannot end it because his opponents mistrust what he does and sags.
The flamboyant ultra right politician Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky called the meeting an "election stunt" which a frightened Mr Yeltsin was trying to pull on the Russian people. His own "solution of the Chechen problem" is to evacuate all the population of Chechnya which wants peace and kill those remaining.
Mr Zhirinovsky has, by the way, been replaced as chief buffoon of the campaign, by a millionaire candidate, Mr Vladimir Bryntsalov, who has told the Russian public "I am rich because I "robbed all of you" and who has declared that he pays his wife $80,000 a month for sex.
As to the serious business of the elections, Mr Yeltsin is now considered likely to win, although by the narrowest of margins, and not until a second round of voting has been held on July 7th.
But there is a great deal of speculation as to what might happen after the results are announced. The country's leading specialist on the Russian military, Mr Pavel Felgenhauer, told The Irish Times that a Yeltsin victory would immediately be challenged on the streets by the communists.
On this occasion, he added, the army is in such a demoralised state that there could be bloodshed similar to that which led to the shelling of the Russian parliament in October 1993.
These views were echoed yesterday by an agency report from the country's second largest city, St Petersburg, which quoted Mr Yeltsin's security chief, the former KGB general Alexander Korzhakov, as saying "If the election takes place, Russia will face riots."
Yesterday's edition of the liberal newspaper Nezavisimv Gata reported that the US Embassy in Moscow was making contingency plans for the evacuation of its citizens should there be major unrest following the announcement of the election results.
