The head of a rebel movement, Doku Umarov, said in the statement on a rebel website that Moscow only wants "to hide the real situation behind lies."
Earlier in the day, Chechnya's Moscow-backed president had proposed a January 1 deadline for separatists to lay down their weapons.
Alu Alkhanov's suggestion came a day after the director of Russia's FSB domestic intelligence service, Nikolai Patrushev, proposed August 1 as the deadline.
Interfax quotes Alkhanov as saying that extending the deadline would give separatists "time to contemplate their decision."
(AP, Interfax, Kavkazcenter)
The Chechnya Conflict
The Chechnya Conflict
The aftermath of a December 2002 Chechen resistance attack on the main government building in Grozny (epa)
CHRONOLOGY
The fighting in Chechnya has raged, with short breaks, since 1994. It has brought misery, death, and destruction to the North Caucasus republic and to Russia as a whole. View an annotated timeline of the conflict.
