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| Caucasus |
| Chechen killer korps threaten to greet vote with violence |
| 2003-03-01 |
| Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov threatened on Friday to disrupt polling in a constitutional referendum next month if authorities proceed with the vote intended to anchor the region firmly within Russia. "Everyone must be told that this referendum means war will continue. If they go ahead with it... there will be kidnapping, murder," Maskhadov said in a taped interview received by correspondents in the region. "My field commanders are preparing for this day. We will do everything to make sure the referendum does not got ahead." Just like the jihadis do in Kashmir. I think it's in the rulebook somewhere... The vote on a new Chechen constitution is set for March 23. Chechnya, battered by a decade of war, has little intact infrastructure, no electricity and running water and roads peppered with checkpoints and mines. But Moscow has pledged to go ahead with the poll, saying the plebiscite, to be followed by an election for Chechen president, is a vital part of a political solution to conflict. "It is possible to say the region is 85 to 90 percent ready for the referendum to go ahead," Chechen official Abdul-Kerim Arsakhanov, told the Central Election Commission in Moscow. Stanislav Ilyasov, the Russian government's minister for Chechnya added: "The questions that were most complicated have been practically solved. But the main question now is to guarantee safety during the referendum. "We have all the finances necessary for this," he told Russian television. If they can keep the civilian body count low, they can claim success... Rights activists say the region is not ready to go to the polls, only months after suicide bombers demolished the local government headquarters, killing 83 people. Last October, in the most daring attack of the current campaign, rebels raided a Moscow theatre in a three-day siege which killed 129 hostages. Activists have accused Russia of using force to guarantee the outcome of the poll. Weren't they just saying Maskhadov was going to use force to guarantee the poll turned out the way he wanted it? Fair's fair, isn't it? Maskhadov, elected in 1997 but on the run since Russian troops poured back into the region more than two years ago, called on Moscow to solve the conflict around the negotiating table. "If we do not solve this now, our descendants will. In 50 years or so, our descendants will rise in arms again," he said. But Moscow has refused to negotiate with Maskhadov, whom it blames for both the October and the December rebel attacks. The Kremlin's Chechnya spokesman has publicly refused to talk to the "non-existent president of a non-existent state". If they were to find him and put a bullet through his head, then a part of the problem would go away, wouldn't it? And if they found Samil, and did the same to him, the other part of the problem would go away, too. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |