Washington Monitoring Chechnya, Stops Short Of Criticism
MOSCOW, Oct 22, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) A senior US government official here said Friday that Washington was concerned about developments in Chechnya but only mildly reproached Moscow's operation to bring the rebel republic to heel.
The administration of US President Bill Clinton, which has urged restraint, was keeping tabs on the human rights situation and encouraging Russia to seek a political solution to the conflict, he said.
But stability remained the top US priority in the region, wracked by crime and a wave of kidnappings since the end of Russia's disastrous 1994-96 bid to crush Chechnya's independence drive, which cost an estimated 80,000 lives.
The US official, who stressed Chechnya was part of the Russian Federation, said Chechen leaders also bore some responsibility for Moscow's decision to send ground troops into the republic on October 1 to crush "terrorist" bases.
"I think the clear issue for us is that we do not want to see actions taken there that will destabilize this region or create conditions that are counter-productive to achieving a settlement there," the official said.
"We don't want to see things down there that contradicts basic human rights and international obligations," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"But when you blow up people in a market, what are you going to say? It's a bad thing to do," he said, referring to Russian missile attacks on the Chechen capital Grozny which have left 137 people dead and some 260 others wounded. Moscow has denied responsibility for the carnage.
"They (the Russian government) are trying to make the case that they are not waging war against the Chechen people, but they've created 150,000 refugees," he said, commenting a Russian air campaign launched September 5 which triggered the exodus.
Russian officials say 177,000 people have fled Chechnya.
However, the US official signaled that Washington understood that Moscow was "not working in a benign environment," saying the Chechens had some "bad guys" who were not respecting international conventions. ((c) 1999 Agence France Presse) |
