Chechnya to feature in final Russia-EU declaration

SAINT PETERSBURG, May 30 (AFP) - Russia's war in separatist Chechnya will be mentioned in a final declaration signed after the Russian-European Union summit here despite opposition from Moscow, an EU official said Friday.

Russia had, according to sources, opposed any mention of President Vladimir Putin's campaign in Chechnya at the summit Saturday, which comes amid the Russian leader's native city's tercentenary celebrations.

The European Union had initially wanted to praise Russia for staging a constitutional referendum in Chechnya in March (*), and to urge Moscow to pursue a political solution to the three-and-a-half year conflict.

The final version of the statement offered to AFP by EU officials follows similar lines.

"We express the hope that the recently started political process as well as the economic and social reconstruction (*) will lead to the restoration of the rule of law, thus promoting further the protection of human rights and, eventually, to a genuine reconciliation in Chechnya," says the statement.

It adds in a clear reference to Chechen guerrillas: "We condemn any kind of violence, in particular terrorist acts, which could endanger the prospects of a political solution" in the republic.

"We agree that international organizations could make a substantial contribution in close cooperation with Russian authorities," the statement on Chechnya concludes.

Putin and several European leaders have been at loggerheads over Chechnya where Russia is staging a self-declared "anti-terrorist" operation that has killed several thousand Russian soldiers and an unknown number of civilians.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Comment:

* Now the EU even praises a referendum that it knows well of having been simply a farce that no civilized country would have ever accepted.

** Beyond this ugly declaration there is obviously not the slightest trace of any "started political process", not to say about an "economic" reconstruction which is now a yearlong promise that has never started.

** Does now also the AFP begin with the typical cynical attempts to hide the truth? The fact that the exact number of the civilians killed is unknown is taken as a nice excuse to hide the uneasy truth that it is certain that at least 150.000 during the two Chechen conflicts died, especially because of the Russian artillery strikes, and that this is only a conservative estimate. M.M.