The Russian army had switched tactics in combating Chechen separatist rebels,
and was now using an "Israeli method" to eliminate rebels, Defence Minister
Sergei Ivanov said.
"The tactics of the federal forces have changed. It is now a precise operation
during which we kill those who ought to be killed," Mr Ivanov was quoted
by Russian news agencies as saying.*
"We use the wholly Israeli method when we know the exact composition of a
cell, and we do not let go until the entire cell has been eliminated.
"If there is a cell of 10 people and we have eliminated nine out of the 10,
we will pursue the 10th until his elimination," he said.
Russian forces have been accused by human rights groups of carrying out arbitrary
arrests and summary executions as troops try to stamp out
separatist resistance in Chechnya.
Referring to the situation in the breakaway southern republic, Mr Ivanov
added: "Obviously, it is we who control the situation but it cannot be
said that there will be no further attacks in the future."
He went on to say that there would be no massive withdrawal of Russian troops
from the war-torn republic in 2003.
Comment by the Yahoo Chechnya list moderator Norbert Strade:
Obviously, Russia kills "those who ought to be killed" by continuing its
policy of indiscrimate shelling and bombing of villages and whole regions,
extra-legal kidnapping, disappearing, torturing and murdering of civilians
by the numbers, large-scale provocative acts, and so on. Or, translating
Ivanov's KGB-speak, the Russian leadership thinks that the whole Chechen
nation "ought to be killed", according to the slogan about the "final solution
of the Chechen problem". Ivanov's attempt to present the mass-murder activities
of the fascist gangs under his command as pin-pointed actions would be quite
funny, if the background wasn't so horrible.