Georgia is the only state that shares a border with Chechnya and is reputed to be the biggest foreign supporter of the Chechens. Rumsfeld's statement was a thinly veiled warning to Georgia to stop working against the Russians in Chechnya.

The change in the government's tone on the Chechen issue became much more formal Dec. 28, when during an interview with Echo Moscow radio, U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow directly linked elements of al Qaeda to some of the fighters in Chechnya. "We [in the United States] have made some progress in cutting off financial support, military

support for the foreign terrorists like Khattab, who are operating there [in Chechnya]," he said. Khattab is a Jordanian-born militant who Washington has linked to al Qaeda.

Such a public statement is a far cry from what the 54-member Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe asserted in May 2000, when it said that Chechnya was an international issue and Russia was in the wrong. The interview was certainly music to the Kremlin's ears; Russian government spokesmen have been arguing for years that the Chechens are in league with Osama bin Laden.

But even such a direct about-face on the issue of foreigners fighting in Chechnya wasn't quite enough for Moscow. The Russian Foreign Ministry hotly contested Vershbow's assertion that Russia should still seek a negotiated settlement with the Chechens, as well as his differentiation between the foreign militants and those natives who had merely
"chosen to take up arms against Russian authority."

At this point, however, such distinctions are mere window dressing: Washington has cut the Chechens loose.