Putin: International terrorists have declared 'full-scale war'
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 3, 2004
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In the wake of the school hostage crisis that killed more than 340 people, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke Saturday, calling for a new approach to law enforcement and pledged the reform would be in accordance with the nation's constitution.
Putin said international terrorists had declared "a full-scale war" against Russia, and that due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nation was weakened and unable to respond as effectively as it must.
"In general, we need to admit that we did not show an understanding of the complexities and dangers of the processes occurring in our own country and in the world," he said in a grim televised address to the nation.
"In any case, we couldn't adequately react ... We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten."
He noted in particular that Russia's borders had become porous and "unprotected from either West or East," and that corruption had pervaded the law enforcement agencies.
Putin called for mobilizing the nation before what he called the "common danger" of terrorism. He said measures would be taken to strengthen Russia's territorial integrity, create a more effective crisis management system, and overhaul the law enforcement organs.
Following Putin's statement, a Russian Government Advisor spoke to Sky news and repeated Putin's appeal that more measures must be taken to fight international terrorism, "which is influencing Chechen rebels as well."
As for the aggravated situation with Chechnya, he said that Putin will continue exercising his tough approach with Chechnya, but will unavoidably be forced to introduce new elements and tactics into his policy and possibly make some concessions to the demands of the Chechens.
Emergency workers on Saturday pulled more than 330 bodies – 156 of them children - out of a southern Russian school that had been held by heavily armed militants, a prosecutor said, and President Vladimir Putin accused the attackers of trying to spark an ethnic conflict that would engulf Russia's troubled Caucasus Mountains region. Officials said more than 500 were wounded in the crisis.
Hospitals are treationg 448 people wounded in the violent seige, and of them 69 remain in serious condition.
The three-day hostage siege ended in chaos and bloodshed Friday, after witnesses said Chechen militants set off bombs and Russian commandos stormed the building and battled militants as crying children, some naked and covered with blood, managed to flee through explosions and gunfire after three days during which the hostage takers herded them into the school gym in the sweltering heat, denied them food and water and threatened to kill them.
As hostages took their chance to flee, the militants opened fire on them, and security forces - along with town residents who had brought their own weapons - opened covering fire to help the hostages escape. The shooting lasted for 10 hours.
Two emergency services workers were killed and three wounded during the chaos, and more than 10 special services officers were killed, Interfax reported.
An explosives expert told NTV television that the hostage takers, themselves strapped with explosives, had hung bombs from basketball hoops in the gym and set other explosive devices in the building.
Interfax news agency reported that the weapons, explosives, and military equipment used by the terrorists were infiltrated onto school grounds while construction work was going on at the school during the summer vacation.
Of the more than thirty terrorists who were killed in gunfights with security forces, ten were from Arab countries, Andreyev said, and Putin's adviser on Chechnya, Aslanbek Aslakhanov, said nine were "Arab mercenaries." Evidently Chechen rebels have formed close alliances with Arab terror groups.
An Arab presence among the attackers would boost Putin's argument that the Russian campaign in neighboring Chechnya, where mostly Muslim separatists have been fighting Russian forces in a brutal war for most of the past decade, is part of the war on international terrorism - seen by Putin's critics as an attempt to deflect human rights criticism.
Interpol offered its services, saying that it could help determine whether the hostage-takers were linked to international terrorists.
Based in Lyon, France, Interpol said its global communications network and databases on fingerprints, stolen travel documents, DNA and other data also are available to Russia if needed.
"Interpol has also offered all assistance necessary to help establish any connection that may exist between the hostage-takers and international terrorist or extremist groups," the police body said in a statement.
Putin flew to Beslan before dawn on Saturday, as smoke was still rising from the shattered school. "Even alongside the most cruel attacks of the past, this terrorist act occupies a special place because it was aimed at children," he said during a meeting with regional officials, which was broadcast on Russian television.
He stressed that security officials had not planned to storm the school - fending off any potential criticism that the government side had provoked the bloodshed - and said the losses had been high.
Dozens of people crowded around lists of survivors posted at the Beslan hospital, searching desperately for news of loved ones who were not yet accounted for. A man showed hospital nurses a photograph - a young boy dressed in a suit, like he was going to a birthday party or holiday celebration.
"We run here, we run there, like we're out of our minds, trying to find out anything we can about them," said Tsiada Biazrova, 47, whose neighbors' children had yet to be found.
For some North Ossetians, grief had turned to anger.
"Fathers will bury their children, and after 40 days (the Orthodox Christian mourning period) ... they will take up weapons and seek revenge," said Alan Kargiyev, a 20-year-old university student in the regional capital Vladikavkaz.
The school attack followed a suicide bomb attack outside a Moscow subway station Tuesday that killed eight people, and last week's near-simultaneous crash of two Russian jetliners last week after what officials believe were explosions on board.
Putin warned against letting the latest attack in North Ossetia stir up tensions in the multiethnic North Caucasus region. "One of the goals of the terrorists was to sow ethnic enmity and blow up the North Caucasus," Putin said.
"Anyone who gives in to such a provocation will be viewed by us as abetting terrorism," he said.
Putin ordered the region's borders closed while officials searched for everyone connected with the attack.
Putin visited several of the hospitalized victims, stopping to stroke the head of one injured child and the arm of the school principal. Six badly wounded children including a two-year-old were flown to Moscow for treatment, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
The region's governor, Alexander Dzasokhov, said Friday that the militants had demanded that Russian troops leave Chechnya - the first solid indication that the attack was connected to the rebellion. Andreyev said Saturday that investigators were looking into whether militants had smuggled the explosives and weapons into the school and hidden them during a renovation this summer.
Alla Gadieyeva, a 24-year-old hostage who was seized with her son and mother - all three were among the survivors - said the captors laughed when she asked them for water for her mother.
"When children began to faint, they laughed," Gadieyeva said. "They were totally indifferent."
On Friday, the Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot demanded in the name of the presidency of the EU that Russian authorities explain the high death toll of the terror attack.
The Russian Foreign Ministry on Saturday reacted with outrage and described the request as "blasphemous".
"Mr. Bot's elaborations are an absolute contrast with the wide international support and solidarity with Russia in these tragic days," the ministry statement quoted by Reuters said.
"Inappropriate statements by the Dutch minister look odious ... and blasphemous," it added. "We expect explanations from the Dutch side."
Interfax news agency later said that the Dutch ambassador had been summoned to the Foreign ministry over Bot's statement.
On Saturday afternoon thousands of Beslan residents demonstrated against President Putin and the Moscow and local government for the failed rescue attempt.
Residents are also angry that promises not to attempt storming the school were broken, and that misinformation was consistently disseminated. They are demanding to know why terror experts were not summoned from Israel – a country they say has successfully faced similar situations, Army Radio reported.
Two major hostage-taking raids by Chechen rebels outside the war-torn region in the past decade provoked Russian rescue operations that led to many deaths. The seizure of a Moscow theater in 2002 ended after a knockout gas was pumped into the building, debilitating the captors but causing almost all of the 129 hostage deaths.
In 1995 - during the first of two wars in Chechnya in the past decade - rebels led by guerrilla commander Shamil Basayev seized a hospital in the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk, taking some 2,000 people hostage. The six-day standoff ended with a fierce Russian assault, and some 100 people died.
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