MOSCOW – As reports that Chechen rebels have declared a ceasefire and are seeking peace talks with Moscow were dismissed as a bluff, the mastermind of the bloody Beslan school siege warned in an interview broadcast yesterday that he is planning to carry out more terrorist attacks on Russian soil.

In the broadcast on Britain’s Channel Four TV, radical warlord Shamil Basayev justified attacks on civilian targets and warned of more to come.

“We are planning more Beslan-type operations in the future because we are forced to do so. … Russian citizens are accomplices of this war even if they have no weapons in their hands.”

Yesterday also saw rebel-linked Web sites quoting the separatist leader, Aslan Maskhadov, as saying he signed an order January 14 for all offensive actions in Chechnya and neighboring areas to be halted in February.

“This is a demonstration of goodwill and an invitation to the Russian side to end this war at the negotiating table,” the statement said. A separate statement from Mr. Basayev said the ceasefire would last until February 22, the eve of the anniversary of the Soviet-era deportation of the Chechen people to Central Asia in 1944, traditionally a day of mourning in Chechnya.

Top officials in Chechnya’s Kremlin backed government dismissed the ceasefire as a “bluff.”

“The Chechen administration is open to dialogue with anyone who wants peace and is ready to help us stop terrorism, but neither Maskhadov nor Basayev have ever shown such a disposition,” President Alkhanov told the Interfax news agency. “We have no grounds whatsoever to think that his new claims that he is ready to cease terrorist warfare are true.”

The Kremlin kept silent however, suggesting to some experts that Moscow may be considering talks.

“After Beslan, and with the tension increasing in areas around Chechnya, the Kremlin is very worried that [the region] is going to explode,” said a Chechnya expert at the Carnegie Center in Moscow, Alexei Malashenko. “The Chechen conflict is becoming more and more dangerous for Putin and the signals coming from the Kremlin are that he’s thinking of a way out,”

Mr. Putin has repeatedly rejected international calls to negotiate with rebel leaders, whom Russia accuses of having links with international terrorists.

Russian prosecutors announced yesterday that they had formally charged Mr. Maskhadov and Mr. Basayev with organizing terrorist acts including the Beslan attack.

In the interview aired last night, Mr. Basayev blamed Russia for the bloody outcome of the siege in Beslan and expressed apparent remorse over the deaths of more than 340 people, scores of them children.

Wearing a black T-shirt with “ANTITERROR” written in white Cyrillic letters and cradling a grenade launcher, Mr. Basayev said his intention in ordering the seizure of the school was to give the Russian leadership no choice but to the stop the “genocide of the Chechen people.”

He said he never expected that Russian forces would storm the school, but was “cruelly mistaken.” He claimed that the collapse of the roof of the school gym was the result of flamethrowers used by Russian special forces and not explosives placed by the hostage-takers.

The broadcast drew a stern rebuke from Russia’s Foreign Ministry, which said “such an irresponsible step in disseminating to a wide audience the views and threats of a bandit … runs counter to efforts of the international community in fighting terrorism.”

Interfax reported late in the day that rumors were swirling of Mr. Basayev’s death in a recent clash with foreign mercenaries in northern Chechnya, but repeated reports of his death in the past have proven wrong.