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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Lacelle who wrote (14706)	9/29/1999 5:01:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17770

West Turns Blind Eye To Russia Chechnya Bombing By Paul Taylor, Diplomatic Editor The West is turning an indulgent blind eye to Russia's bombing of Chechnya, partly out of a shared concern at Islamic extremism but also to avoid unwelcome parallels with NATO's Kosovo campaign, diplomats say. With Russian warplanes in their sixth day of air strikes on the breakaway Caucasian republic, the Western response so far has been a mixture of silence, expressions of understanding and quiet pleas to avoid another full-scale war. "No one is comfortable with the idea that this region, with its mineral wealth and transit routes, may give birth to rival Islamic republics that could even fight each other," Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said in an editorial. "The reaction is to watch in embarrassed silence." Diplomats say Western governments accept that Chechnya is an internal Russian matter and understand public pressure to act against the rear bases of Islamic guerrillas Moscow blames for a spate of deadly bomb attacks in Russian cities as well as bloody incursions into Dagestan. To avoid upsetting President Boris Yeltsin, seen at the time as the guarantor of Russian reform, Western criticism was mostly muted during Moscow's disastrous 1994-96 Chechnya war, despite blanket bombing that caused horrendous casualties. The Council of Europe, which promotes democracy and human rights, voted to admit Russia in January 1996 despite the war. Russian leaders have taken care to wrap their "limited air operation" to "fight international terrorism" in the vocabulary of NATO's Kosovo campaign and last year's U.S. missile strike on Afghanistan and Sudan. Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy came close on Monday to endorsing Russian action, saying it was important for Moscow to deal forcefully with terrorism in Chechnya. "In that zone on the borders, there are very active cells of extreme Moslem agitators who are being supported from outside, who have become a major cause of the instability in the area," he told reporters. "That kind of terrorism that's being wreaked has to be met pretty forcefully, and the tools for meeting it are limited." U.S. SHARES CONCERN OVER BIN LADEN The U.S. administration, whose ties with Moscow are under intense political scrutiny at home with a congressional inquiry into alleged Russian laundering of aid money, has confined its comments on Chechnya to urging Russia not to go too far. State Department spokesman James Rubin called last Friday for "a constructive dialogue that could lead to a peaceful resolution of this conflict and restraint from military actions that could make this dialogue more difficult". In what appeared to be a veiled warning against a ground offensive, Rubin said the United States would view a resumption of general hostilities in Chechnya as a threat to stability in the entire North Caucasus region. Western oil companies seeking to develop the Caspian Basin's oil and gas resources need stability in the Caucasus and fear the spread of Islamic militancy. Diplomats say the United States has taken seriously Russian concern that Saudi-born Islamic guerrilla warlord Osama Bin Laden may be financing Moslem rebels in the North Caucasus and has shared intelligence on the issue with Moscow. Bin Laden is Washington's public enemy number one, accused of financing and masterminding the bombings that destroyed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania last year. At Russia's urging, foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council adopted a strongly worded statement last Thursday calling for stronger international action to fight terrorism. Meeting as Russian planes bombed Grozny, the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France pledged to deny safe haven or asylum to those "who plan, finance or commit terrorist acts". PRIVATE DOUBTS ABOUT MOSCOW'S MOTIVES But while the response of Western governments has been sympathetic or neutral, there is some questioning of the Kremlin's motives for launching the Chechnya offensive, and some criticism of the West's indulgence. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called the bombing of Grozny "a criminally bad substitute for a policy" and said Moscow's attempted show of strength could turn into a demonstration of impotence. The Society for Threatened Peoples, a German-based human rights group, accused Russia of indiscriminately bombing the civilian population in Chechnya and condemned the Berlin government for keeping quiet and protecting IMF loans to Moscow. "Are the human rights of the Kosovo Albanians more important than those of the Chechens? Or is Russia silently being given a free hand because it allowed NATO to intervene in Kosovo?" the group's chairman Tilman Zuelch asked in a statement. Several analysts said the bombing appeared to be prompted at least partly by Yeltsin's drive to wrongfoot domestic political opponents ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections, and to establish the authority of new Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. "Just as in 1994-96, the main concern of Western governments appears to be to avoid embarrassing Yeltsin on internal affairs," said Gilles Andreani of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He said "guilty conscience" among some European NATO allies about having intervened in Kosovo without a U.N. mandate might also explain the absence of Western criticism over Chechnya. (C)1999 Copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.