A rchive Date
[ 28-10-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Russia ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2002/10/27/2756.html
Putin leads day of mourning in Russia, pledges no surrender to terrorists
Mon, October 28, 2002
MOSCOW (CP) - President Vladimir Putin led a national day of mourning Monday and pledged Russia would not surrender to terrorist "blackmail." Relatives and friends grieved for 118 captives who died in the siege at a Moscow theatre, all but two from the paralysing gas used to rescue them. Using words remarkably similar to those of U.S. President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, Putin pledged in televised comments to give the military broader powers to move against suspected terrorists and their sponsors.
"Russia will answer with measures adequate to the threat to the Russian Federation in all places where the terrorists, the organizers of these crimes or their ideological or financial sponsors are located," Putin said.
"I emphasize - wherever they may be."
Putin has said the theatre raid was planned abroad, and the Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday claimed, without offering evidence, that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist organization was involved.
Officials said 405 of the freed captives remained hospitalized, 45 of them in grave condition. Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matviyenko said 239 people had been released.
Russian medical officials said 116 of the hostages held by Chechen rebels in the theatre had succumbed to the gas, the exact composition of which remained a secret even to medical personnel treating victims.
Russian authorities provided the U.S. Embassy with some information about the effects of the gas, but have not told them the name of the agent despite repeated requests, an embassy spokesman said.
Doctors from a western embassy have examined some of the former hostages and concluded "the agent they were exposed to appears consistent with an opiate rather than a nerve agent," the embassy spokesman said. Opiates, including morphine and heroin, are derivatives of the opium poppy.
The U.S. Embassy spokesman also said American diplomats located a body believed to be that of a U.S. citizen who died during the hostage-taking, one of two Americans in the theatre when Chechen rebels stormed it Wednesday night during a performance of the musical Nord-Ost.
Two foreign women - one Dutch, one Austrian - and a 13-year-old girl from Kazakhstan also were known to have died.
Vassilen Nedkov, a Bulgarian landed immigrant who lives in Toronto, was among the hostages who survived the harrowing ordeal, as was Irina Cooper, who has dual British-Canadian citizenship and lives in Britain.
Nedkov said that when his nose began tingling from the gas, he grabbed a handkerchief, dipped it in water and put it over his mouth and nose.
"After that, I don't remember anything until I woke up in hospital," he said Sunday. He said he feels no after-effects from the gas although he had convulsions for about an hour after he awoke in hospital.
In Ottawa, Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said Monday that Canada would seek information on what happened.
"The Russian authorities chose to react in a certain way which they - I assume - believed would save the maximum number of lives in the most efficient way," Graham told reporters.
"We might have done it differently. We might have had another approach. Different societies have to have different approaches to these solutions."
"But when it comes to how the authorities deal with a specific situation, surely we must leave the local authorities responsibility ... for dealing with that situation."
Russian officials said 50 rebels were killed during the storming of the building early Saturday. Many of the insurgents were women who claimed to be Chechen war widows.
As pressure grew on Russian authorities to identify the gas used in the raid, some legislators and commentators criticized the government.
Boris Nemtsov, a leader of the liberal Union of Right Forces party, criticized authorities for failing to treat the hostages promptly after pumping the gas into the theatre.
At a Moscow hospital where many of the freed hostages were taken, a crowd of relatives waited to visit loved ones. Every time guards opened the black gates for ambulances or departing patients, the crowd rushed the entrance, pleading to be next.
Hundreds of people - some weeping - placed flowers and candles in a cold rain near the theatre in a rundown neighbourhood in southeast Moscow. Police kept a tight cordon of metal barriers and military trucks around the building.
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - The organization tasked with monitoring the world's chemical weapons may be called upon to investigate Russia's use of gas to knock out 50 Chechens who seized a Moscow theatre, officials said Monday. The unknown gas is blamed for the deaths of at least 116 hostages.
Russian officials have kept the substance a secret even as doctors treated the hundreds of survivors. U.S. officials identified it Monday as an opiate related to morphine. Such substances not only kill pain and dull the senses, but can cause coma and death by shutting down breathing and circulation.
The gas used may be banned under an international convention on chemical weapons and raised concerns among members of the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, officials said on condition of anonymity.
An OPCW official told The Associated Press that it was "likely" one of its members will ask Tuesday that the group "seek clarification" from Russia on the type of gas used. The official declined to say which country is expected to make the request.
Established in 1997, the OPCW oversees the treaty prohibiting the production and use of toxic agents. Under its rules, it could be asked by any of its 147 members to investigate which substance was used in the theatre. It can also facilitate international negotiations on issues relating to the use of prohibited chemicals.
Organization spokesman Peter Kaiser said the international body was "waiting, as many people are, to learn what exactly occurred." He said no member has yet asked for an investigation.
The organization's members can also request a so-called "challenge inspection" of chemical sites, a mechanism that has never been used.
The Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits the use of all toxic agents, except for law enforcement, medical or scientific research, and protection against chemical weapons. Those chemicals are intended only to produce "sensory irritation or disabling physical effects which disappear within a short time," but aren't supposed to be fatal.
Russian authorities have said the compound acted more aggressively than had been expected.
Doctors said the gas can paralyse breathing, cardiac and liver functioning, and blood circulation. The effects were worsened by the conditions in which the hostages had been confined - virtually no movement, lack of water, food and sleep, psychological stress, and by the chronic medical problems some of them suffered.
Russia has the world's largest stockpile of chemical weapons, about 40,000 tonnes compared with 30,000 for the United States.
On Oct. 15, the OPCW granted Russia an extension of its time limit to destroy its weapons, accepting its plea of a shortage of funds.
On the Net:
OPCW: opcw.org/
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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