Chechnya could become the terror training ground for the new millennium as its conflict with Russia may spawn a new generation of "terrorists," CIA Director George Tenet said on Wednesday.

"Afghanistan was the calling card in the '70s and '80s. Chechnya will become the calling card of this millennium in terms of where do terrorists go and train and act," Tenet said at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

The types of conflicts that the Chechens and Russians are engaged in currently "turn into spawning grounds of the next generation of people who try their skills," he said.

"Terrorists" were likely to take the opportunity to inject themselves into the situation for religious reasons or to help the Chechens, he said.

That in turn "will create a cascading effect of people proving their mettle on a battleground that they will then come back and test against us in other places," Tenet said.

Russia's military action alone will not resolve its conflict with Chechnya, Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said at the same hearing.

The Chechen situation has "been going on for centuries and it won't be solved by military action," he said.

Russia was using some of the same "brute force tactics" that did not work well in 1996, "of heavy bombardment of the city and then followed up with infantry and internal security forces which are ill-prepared to conduct urban warfare," Wilson said.

"So the Russian military is not well-prepared for the situation that they were thrust into," he said. "They're taking losses, as are the Chechens. And it will not solve the problem, which will be around for a long time at the current pace."