Yeltsin faces backlash as Chechens battle on

third day on streets lined with gutted buildings, burnt-out tanks, and

dozens of corpses.

Russian Government statements said the Kremlin's troops had gained

ground three days after a tank-led Russian advance into the city to oust

separatist President Dzhokhar Dudayev.

However news videotape coverage showed Chechen fighters moving

unimpeded through city-centre districts.

Some opened fire on Russian troops from behind trees or kiosks. Others

advanced warily along streets with downed trolley-bus lines and

buildings blackened and pulverised by three weeks of Russian air raids.

In Moscow, Yegor Gaidar, who led Russia's reform programme after the

fall of communism and was once President Boris Yeltsin's close ally,

warned that the conflict threatened Russia with authoritarian rule. The

former Prime Minister voiced the rising anger of many Russians over what

is being widely condemned as a badly thought-out Russian operation.

Blaming hardline Yeltsin aides for the ''military catastrophe'',

Gaidar said the Russian Government could be replaced by or transformed

into an authoritarian regime.

''Events there bear witness once again to the adventurist nature of

the chosen course of a military solution to the problem and at the same

time sharply exacerbate the threat of an authoritarian regime being

formed in Russia,'' he told a news conference.

Gaidar said he was trying to convene an urgent meeting of Parliament

to discuss Chechnya and would propose hearings ''to expose all those who

were responsible for the military operations carried out there''.

Television showed smoke rising from near Dudayev's presidential palace

today but his whereabouts were unknown.

In a television appearance yesterday, he called for fresh talks to end

the Russian push on Grozny and suggested that Russian soldiers held

prisoner could otherwise be killed.

In a letter offering talks to Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin,

Dudayev said the final push into Grozny had been a ''catastrophe for the

attackers and a tragedy for the defenders''.

Interfax news agency said its correspondent in Grozny had reported

that rebels were still keeping Russian troops well away from the palace.

It said the main fighting was near the railway station, a mile west of

the palace.

''Alongside the presidential palace and on its approaches to the north

and north-west are dozens of destroyed Russian armoured vehicles,''

Interfax reported. ''All around lie the bodies of servicemen. Our

correspondent counted about 100 dead Russian servicemen on the streets

around the palace.''

Russian Government statements yesterday said Russian forces had

''regrouped'' after losing several dozen tanks as the advance ran into

stiff resistance. Later, however, they said Russian troops had gained

new ground and secured control of main strategic positions.

Yeltsin sent thousands of troops into Chechnya on December 11, saying

Dudayev's government was harbouring criminals and vowing to crush his

three-year drive to secure independence from Moscow.

However the action has tended to galvanise the resistance of Chechens,

many of whom were previously unsympathetic to Dudayev.

In Moscow, Russian MPs back from a three-week stay in Grozny urged

Yeltsin to halt the advance and resume talks with Chechen leaders.

''Our soldiers of 18 and 19 are lying in the streets in their

hundreds, uncollected three days after being killed,'' said MP Viktor

Korochkin.

Russia faces the choice of unleashing all-out force on Grozny or

withdrawing in humiliation. Western commentators said both options

spelled political disaster for Yeltsin and could lead Moscow into a new

era of authoritarian rule.

''The army is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea -- to

raze the city would be just as politically unacceptable as withdrawal,''

said one Western military expert -- Reuter.