RUSSIANS SAY NO DEAL TO CHECHENS.

Byline: Michael Specter The New York Times

The man with the wool mask covering his face and the Walkman dangling from his neck was once again demanding freedom for the Chechen people. His dangerous eyes were green, a perfect match for the silk strip of the Islamic warrior that he wore across his hooded head.

On the third day of this strange, moveable hostage saga that began Tuesday when he and 200 comrades seized a hospital in nearby Kizlyar, the Chechen fighter, who called himself Hassan, summoned five reporters and a few Russian military leaders to a meeting in the icy road outside the town he and his colleagues now occupy.

Cradling his automatic weapon in the biting wind, he said it would be easy to resolve the latest crisis in the 13-month-old war between Chechnya and Russia. "Let us go home, and we will free the hostages," he said.

The generals shook their heads, because they had another idea. "First you free the hostages," said Alimpasha Alavov, a local Dagestani official who has been leading the negotiations here. "Then we can talk about your journey home."

So the standoff continued, a tense miniature of the civil drama that has nearly ruined Boris N. Yeltsin's presidency and again threatens his political future. After standing in a circle guarded by Russian snipers and talking for a while, the Chechen rebels returned to the village they control, where they say they will kill their 143 hostages if they are not granted safe passage to their homeland, less than a half-mile away.

In response the Russians did what they do best: They called in more artillery, several new tank columns, half a dozen helicopters and hundreds of extra troops to surround a village already ringed in armor.

"They have a lot of weapons, and we know they are committed," said Gen. Alexander G. Mikhailov, spokesman for the Russian federal security service, the successor to the KGB. "But if we have to, we will annihilate them."

That is an option that clearly nobody wants, but there is little room for compromise in this part of the world, where 13 months of separatist war have cost as many as 30,000 lives. So Russia and Chechnya today are pretty much just where they were yesterday, and where they have been for 300 years: a huge country with nothing but power has encircled a small, tenacious and sometimes ruthless band of rebels whose only promise is to fight until they die or are free.