A rchive Date
[ 02-11-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Russia ]
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[http://www.islam-online.net/english/news/2002-11/02/article33.shtml
U.S., Europe Unlikely To Press Russia On Chechnya: Analysts
MOSCOW, November 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies)
The dramatic hostage-taking at a Moscow theater succeeded in thrusting the Chechen war back into the spotlight, but Europe and the United States are unlikely to put pressure on Russia to solve the drawn-out conflict, analysts say.
"Real pressure for a political solution in Chechnya is not very likely from the Europeans, and even less so from the Americans," Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted Dmitry Trenin of the Carnegie Center's Russia office as saying.
European calls for a political solution to the conflict, all but silenced after the September 11 attacks and subsequent U.S.-led war on terror, have slowly begun to appear once more.
"Aside from the military path, a political solution is needed," NATO Secretary General George Robertson said in an interview published Friday, November 1, in Russian daily Vremya Novostei.
"The scourge of terrorism brings Russia and NATO closer together, we're united with Russia," Robertson said, following the dramatic hostage-taking in Moscow that left 119 hostages dead, almost if not all, by the gas Russian forces used in storming the building.
The European Union has said that Russia accepted a German proposal that Chechnya be put on the agenda for Russian-E.U. talks scheduled for November 11, in Brussels.
Russian President Vladimir Putin himself has said that he would like to see a political solution to the bloody conflict, which modest official Russian estimates say left at least 4,500 Russian soldiers and tens of thousands of Chechen civilians dead.
However, he has refused to negotiate with any of the Chechen leadership, including its disavowed elected President Aslan Maskhadov.
Instead, the Kremlin launched a targeted campaign to further discredit the Chechen administration following the dramatic hostage-taking, beginning with the arrest earlier this week in Denmark of top envoy Akhmed Zakayev.
"Give me the name of just one leader with whom we can negotiate - I don't know any," the Kremlin's top aide on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said Thursday, October 31.
Yet, analysts seemed skeptical that Europe or the United States would push strongly for a solution to the conflict.
"Europe has already shown some weakness. The Danes went so far as to arrest Akhmed Zakayev," Trenin said.
Danish police, acting on a Russian arrest warrant, arrested Zakayev on Wednesday, October 30, as he attended a conference on Chechnya in Copenhagen, but have not agreed yet to extradite him.
Despite sometimes intense criticism of the widespread human rights abuses committed by Russian forces in Chechnya, Europe has sanctioned Russia only once since it sent its troops into the southern republic in October 1999.
In April 2000, the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly stripped Russia of its right to vote within the 41-nation human rights body, citing human rights abuses against Chechen civilians.
Although reports of abuses continued, the assembly reinstituted Russia's right to vote less than one year later, in January 2001.
"I don't think that Europe will make a big case out of Chechnya," independent political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky said.
"And as long as the Americans need Moscow's support to adopt a new resolution on Iraq, they will coddle Russia," he said.
Washington, which has claimed that Chechen fighters hold ties with al-Qaeda, said Thursday that it was considering placing a number of independence-seeking groups on its blacklist of suspected terrorist groups.
"The Americans want to win the war against terror and they will block any pressure on Russia," said analyst Eric Kraus of the Sovlink investment bank.
Analyst Viktor Kremenyuk was all the more skeptical, saying that Putin would change his stance on Chechnya for just one reason and it would happen "six months before the 2004 presidential election."
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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