Miami (AP) – The Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara passed on an offer of peace with Washington over cocktail martinis, according to newly released documents. But, stung by the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, President Kennedy snubbed him, condemning the two countries to decades of bitter emnity.
The offer was detailed in a memorandum written by a top White House adviser who described a remarkable encounter with Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Argentine- born insurgent who became the second most powerful man in Cuba.The Miami Herald reported yesterday that Richard Goodwin, Kennedy’s assistant special counsel, was approached by Guevara at a cocktail party in Uruguay on 17 August 1961, four months after the failed US-backed invasion.Guevara told Goodwin that the Castro government was prepared to forgo an alliance with the Soviet bloc, pay for confiscated American properties in trade and curb Cuban support for leftist insurgents in other countries. Despite his announcement of a ceasefire on 31 March, the conflict has continued.It followed a series of confusing reports yesterday saying that Dudayev’s replacement, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, had been killed during a shoot-out after only a week in office.The reports fuelled theories, encouraged by the Russians, that the Chechen leadership is in the grips of a “razborka”, or internal feud, despite its outwardly unified front.The reports were denied by Doku Makhayev, a senior Chechen commander in south-west Chechnya. The bearded, hardline commander, who is regarded as an idol by many Chechens, will replace Aslan Maskhadov, whom Russia has long regarded as one of the less extreme Chechen leaders, and who is capable of negotiating a peace deal.
Mr Maskhadov’s future role in the leadership, which has been reshuffled following the death of Dzhokhar Dudayev, is not clear.The news will not please President Boris Yeltsin who has vowed to end the Chechen war, in which more than 30,000 people have died, before this June’s presidential election. Moments later, she clambered into a battered old grey Volga, accompanied by three bodyguards, and clattered off across the landscape, leaving a trail of dust as impenetrable as the circumstances surrounding her husband’s death..

Russia sunk deeper into the quagmire of the Chechen war yesterday after separatist rebels reportedly chose Shamil Basayev, one of their most uncompromising commanders, to replace one of the movement’s more moderate leaders as their chief-of-staffMr Basayev, who grabbed the international headlines by leading a mass hostage-taking in a southern Russian town in June last year, was chosen on Sunday by the other Chechen field commanders, according to the Russian news agency RIA, which quoted a source close to the Chechen separatist leadership. Why did the general have such a small, swift, secret funeral? Why have no photographs been released to date of his body?It was with the intention of clearing up these matters that a small party of journalists, including the Independent, met Alla Dudayev, the general’s wife, in a Chechen farmhouse.The occasion was surreal. Mrs Dudayev, a Russian, arrived dressed like a Hollywood leading lady in widow’s weeds, her blonde locks shrouded in a black silk scarf. Watched over by two fighters, she made a quavering appeal for peace, read one of her poems, buried her head in her hands, and fled from the room after only one question.

Half a mile away, scores of khaki-clad fighters were milling around outside the local school, waiting to feast on a slaughtered cow, undaunted by the nearby pop of exploding bullets from Russian snipers “With Dudayev, we fought for freedom And without him we fight for freedom. The aim hasn’t changed,” he continued, before sticking his pistol in his belt, for the photographers’ benefit.The message was consistent, no matter who you talked to: the battle for independence goes on; the movement is not split and the new leader, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, was elected and is fully supported Yet the answers to key questions were missing. Some of the high command seemed genuinely bewildered by Dudayev’s death Yet they also seemed almost too organised. Journalists arriving in rebel-held territory were taken to press conferences, given by senior commanders.The performance by “brigade general” Ruslan Gelayev, the rebels’ second most powerful commander, was typical.”The Russians are trying to divide us,” he told journalists in Komsomolskoye, a rebel-held Chechen village. Instead of proclaiming their triumph, the military dithered – unable to decide whether to take the plaudits for a rare success, or undermine the Chechens by encouraging the world to believe they had killed their own leader.The head of Russian forces in Chechnya, General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, denied there were operations in the Gekhi-Chu area when Dudayev was killed.

This was contradicted by the Interior Ministry, which said the area had been bombed.Then there was the strange behaviour of the Chechens. Moreover, the Russian military reportedly have the technology to do it, although the missile strike seemed uncharacteristically well-executed.Ten days on, the picture has become less clear. The first hint that Russia may not have been involved lies in the reaction to Dudayev’s death. The Russians wanted to avenge an attack on a convoy five days earlier on 16 April in which scores of troops died, an episode that so angered the generals that they began to openly attack President Yeltsin’s Chechnya policy. This was bad news for the Kremlin, as presidential elections are less than two months away.

The separatists said he was blown up while making a telephone call on a hillside outside the village of Gekhi-Chu, 20 miles south of Grozny. He was hit by a missile fired from a jet, after the Russians pinpointed his whereabouts by intercepting the signal of his satellite phone.It seemed plausible. In villages in southern Chechnya, thousands of men, women and children wept, danced, prayed and feasted on mutton.The Chechens blamed the Russians, who made no secret of their desire to kill the general. So did the residents of Grozny who listen every night as jets roar overhead on their way to yet another bombing run. But now, a fresh crop of rumours and suspicions is sprouting. They concern the death of Dzhokhar Dudayev, leader of the Chechen separatists.When the Russian news agency, Itar-Tass, broke the news that Dudayev had been killed, it was treated with caution by the outside world Then the confirmations rolled in.