THE television pictures were almost unbelievable: young, close cropped Russian soldiers starting out on patrols accompanied, by older and fiercer looking Chechen rebels, their heads swathed in bandanas imprinted with verses from the Koran.
They were pictures which gave hope. Early yesterday Muscovites on the streets and at metro stations had begun to cast off suspicions engendered by so many failed ceasefires in the past. The general view was that perhaps, this time, there was an agreement that would work. Only one person spoke against the plan, an elderly man who said: "It's disgusting to see our troops consorting with those bandits."
By mid afternoon there were indications that things were going wrong. The news came through from Grozny that the peace talks were deadlocked. Some Chechen rebels had seized arms and ammunition from a Russian convoy. An ultimatum had been issued by the Russian field commander, Gen Vyacheslav Tikhomirov. The materiel would have to be returned or all bets were off. Mr Alexander Lebed was heading back to Moscow and spoke of mounting problems concerning a political settlement.
These problems had been in the air since President Yeltsin issued a contradictory statement late on Friday night, supporting Mr Lebed's efforts on the one hand while emphatically ruling out independence for Chechnya on the other. In so many words Mr Yeltsin was saying: "The rebels can have anything except what they want.
It may have been too much to expect that Russia would agree to full independence for Chechnya, but Mr Yeltsin's statement could not have come at a worse time. It is understood that Mr Lebed's proposed political settlement involved the Chechen leadership putting its independence claims on ice until a measure of economic and physical recovery had taken place in the devastated region. Although a period of five years was envisaged, Mr Yeltsin's announcement appeared as a message to the rebels that they were wasting their time.
Now the peace process is once more on a knife edge, the situation is so delicate that a single minor incident could tip the balance once more in favour of the "party of war" in a Kremlin administration riven with the darkest intrigue and personal ambition.
One broadcaster has compared Mr Yeltsin's policy of setting his underlings at each others throats to the tactics employed by Ivan the Terrible with his Boyars. The result has been a presidential entourage in which each member is suspicious of the other and in which tenure of office hangs by the thread of the elected tsar's capricious will.
"Who has the president's car?" is the question posed most frequently by Russian analysts.
On television yesterday Mr Yeltsin's ear was being bent by his Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, who described the peace process as Mr Yeltsin's personal success in which Mr Lebed acted as a mere emissary. He may have been playing to the vanity of the "tsar", a term Mr Yeltsin has used to describe himself, but at the same time his words may have been premature. In, the event of a resumption of hostilities, it would, to follow the prime minister's logic, be Mr Yeltsin's failure.
Mr Cheruomyrdin is known to be antipathetic to Mr Lebed's arrival on the political scene, but even more hostile to the president's security chief is the Interior Minister, Gen Anatoly Kulikov, whose dismissal was demanded by Mr Lebed and refused by Mr Yeltsin.
Significantly, almost all the alleged breaches of the recent ceasefire by the Chechens have involved reported attacks on Interior Ministry troops rather than on the Russian army.
The incident which led to Gen Tikhomirov's ultimatum also involved Interior Ministry soldiers, who say rebels seized 58 rifles, a dozen light machine guns and 15 grenade launchers as they drove in convoy through Grozny.
The seizure was discussed at a meeting of staff officers, at which Mr Lebed was present, before Gen Tikhomirov issued his ultimatum. Mr Lebed left Grozny for Moscow with an appeal to the Chechens to be "sensible and patient", saying: "Those who fire first oppose peace."
A meeting arranged between Gen Tikhomirov and the Chechen military commander, Mr Aslan Maskhadov, was later cancelled.
The morning's hopes were dissipating in the heat of the Chechen late afternoon.
