Russia’s foreign minister on Friday dismissed French suggestions that there was open war in Chechnya, saying Moscow was battling terrorism there and urged Europeans to be more objective about the problem.
| They don't have the problem, so they concentrate on "human rights." It's so much easier to be a Monday-morning quarterback... |
Moscow’s tactics in Chechnya are a touchy subject in Russia — President Vladimir Putin once offered to have a French journalist castrated after he asked a critical question — and it is always quick to rebut any perceived criticism. "I cannot agree with the statement that war is going on in Chechnya... It is a fight against international terrorism," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told reporters after a meeting with French counterpart Dominique de Villepin. "We very much want, and it is in Russia’s interests, that Europe has an objective understanding of the processes that are under way in Chechnya."
| They've got an ideological understanding. That's a different thing entirely. The Washington Post has the same problem. |
Moscow has been fighting to keep the region in Russia for nine years, refusing to negotiate with rebels who ruled a de facto independent Chechnya for three years after 1996. It says elections and a referendum last year firmly tied the rebel region to Russia and put it on the path to peace, but security forces die almost daily in escalating violence. "Chechnya has been in a situation of open war for too many years," Villepin had said in a speech earlier in the day. "We know well, here as elsewhere, that there cannot be a solution founded only on a security-based strategy. Only a political process can restore peace and ease the sufferings of the civilian population."
| Only killing Maskhadov and Basayev, and either killing or chasing out the Arabs, will solve the problem. |
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