Thursday, Jun. 19, 2003

Blair Backs Putin on Chechnya

The Associated Press LONDON

Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday that he would raise the issue of human rights abuses in Chechnya in an upcoming meeting with President Vladimir Putin, but said he also supported Moscow's efforts to fight terrorism. "I always raise the issue of Chechnya with President Putin, but I do so in a way that also recognizes this point -- that as a result of terrorism coming out from extremists based in Chechnya, the Russian people have also suffered a very great deal," Blair said in the House of Commons. [snip - To see more on this click here.]

The head of a European Parliament delegation that recently returned from Chechnya said Wednesday that he saw "the first signs of recovery" in the republic. [1] "People are rising from their cellars from below the ground, to the floors above," said Reino Paasilinna, "I believe we are at a watershed." He added, however, that the March referendum in Chechnya, presented by the Kremlin as a significant step toward stability, was flawed. "The referendum was not satisfactory on all fronts," Paasilinna said. He spoke at a news conference in Brussels that was beamed by satellite to Moscow. In the March referendum, Chechens approved a Kremlin-backed constitution that cemented the region's status as part of Russia while promising it limited autonomy that has yet to be defined. Although members of the delegation compared Grozny to Berlin and Stalingrad after World War II, Paasilinna welcomed the reopening of schools and hospitals and the return of water and electricity to parts of the city. However, he expressed particular concern about the rising number of reported kidnappings in Chechnya, which human rights groups blame largely on the Russian military. "People are disappearing all the time. This year there have been more than 250 registered cases of disappearances, which is an alarming figure," he said. [2]

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Comment:

[1] Our glorious European delegates (always accompanied by Russian authorities in a guided tour) are seeing positive signs of recovery in Chechnya since almost four years now.

[2] Obviously no word about the authors of these crimes. M.M.