61.   If allied forces take cities, he said, they would join guerrilla resistance.

62.   Meanwhile he has been negotiating with some Taliban figures in hope of taking the city without bloodshed.

63.   President Chandrika Kumaratunga made a final call for negotiations, but the Tigers were silent, making clear they intend to try to take the city.

64.   Russian troops to the north of Grozny said they were confident of taking the city within the next few days.

65.   Querton said regular Angolan troops took the city.

66.   Russian commanders said last month that the city would be taken within days.

67.   Shortly before Nadeem spoke, an alliance commander had said the alliance would take the city by force if its defenders did not surrender on Sunday.

68.   The city was taken by the rebels and they have had a battalion of government troops nearby surrounded for a week.

69.   The intensified effort to take the city came as acting President Vladimir Putin visited Russian forces in Chechnya to praise them for the campaign to crush separatist rebels.

70.   The party took the city to court and won the right to show the video there and in an appeal heard Friday.