by Simon Ostrovsky
BAKU - Anzor Maskhadov was the son of Chechnya's legitimate president when he left the republic shortly before the start of the second Chechen war in 1999. Today he is the son of a slain rebel leader, with the Russian authorities on his heels.
"When the second war started, I wanted to come back, but my father told me to go someplace not far from the Caucasus," Mashkadov told AFP in a recent interview as he sat below his father's portrait in a safe house in Baku, flanked by burly bodyguards.
"I went to Turkey, then the (United Arab) Emirates and then from one place to the next. I wanted to stay alive," he said.
The 29-year-old spoke during a short visit to Azerbaijan, an ex-Soviet republic to which many Chechens fled during the decade-old conflict between separatists and pro-Moscow forces.
He came from an undisclosed location to attend memorial services for his father in Baku -- the closest he dares to go to Chechnya, which today is overrun with Russian troops and pro-Moscow forces.
The elder Maskhadov, whose 1997 election Moscow initially recognized but whom the Kremlin later branded a terrorist, was killed by Russian forces last week in a village north of Chechnya's capital, Grozny.
His death was a landmark in Russia's second campaign in the recalcitrant republic, which began in October 1999 as a lightning-strike "anti-terrorist" operation.
For the younger Maskhadov the killing means that his dreams of returning to his homeland are today more distant than ever.
"My dream has been to go back to Chechnya, this is what my father wanted ... (but) at home everybody knows me and I can't just get in a car and go back."
"I want to be useful to my people, I try to tell the world the truth about what is happening in Chechnya," he said, acknowledging that fate perhaps would force him into a life of politics."
"I've always wanted to be like my father, in everything I do, down to the way I breathe, walk or drink a cup of tea," and will continue to strive to do so, he said.
He ruled out, however, avenging his father's death.
"If I was at home, I would do something, but I leave this deed up to the Chechen people," he said.
Life for the only son of Chechnya's top rebel chief is one of constantly looking over the shoulder and endless relocations.
He moves frequently to avoid the Kremlin's long reach, spurred on by phone calls he sometimes receives from people he believes to be from the Russian special services, "They say, 'we know where you are, we're going to get you in the end,'" he said.
He does not take such threats lightly -- last year, two Russian security agents were convicted of killing former Chechen president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in normally calm Qatar. He died in a car bombing on his way home from a mosque.
Even on the run, Mashkadov has fared better than relatives who remained in the republic.
He said that during last year's Beslan school hostage-taking tragedy in southern Russia, a campaign began against his relatives, despite his father's denial of having anything to do with the affair.
He said many relatives from his mother's and father's side were abducted and taken to the Russian military headquarters at Khankala in Chechnya in an effort to force Maskhadov to surrender, while one of the Chechen leader's sisters was allegedly tortured in a prison in the town of Tsentoroi, the headquarters of the pro-Moscow Chechen leadership.
When Maskhadov last spoke with his father in March, the separatist chief was hopeful that his appeals to the Kremlin for talks to end the decade-old conflict would bear fruit.
"He said we would not have to suffer much longer, that things would work out," the son said.
With Maskhadov gone, observers have warned, the leadership of the rebels will naturally transfer to the hard-line leader Shamil Basayev -- who has claimed responsibility for the Beslan hostage-taking and several suicide bombings in Russia -- and the conflict would radicalize even further.

03/15/2005 12:58 GMT