Russias Putin rules out talks with Chechen separatists

Agence France Presse — English
September 16, 2004 Thursday

ASTANA Sept 16 — Russias President Vladimir Putin on Thursday rejected
the idea of negotiations with Chechen separatists blamed for the
Beslan school siege at a regional summit focused on anti-terrorism.

Putin said that holding talks with rebel leaders from Russia’s
breakaway republic of Chechnya would be akin to negotiating with
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

“Bin Laden has twice offered Europe negotiations and no one thinks
of negotiating with him. “These are people you cannot talk to,”
Putin said.

“Naturally the atrocities we encountered in Beslan gave us the complete
moral right to insist that these people who are fighting against
Russia are part of the terrorist internationale,” he told journalists.

Putin has repeatedly linked recent attacks in Russia that culminated in
the deaths of more than 330 people at a school in the town of Beslan,
near Chechnya, to international Islamic terrorism.

His critics have focused more on local causes including corruption and
the failure to seek a political solution to the more than five-year
guerrilla war in Chechnya.

The Russian leader was speaking at a meeting of heads of the
12-member Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) bloc of former
Soviet republics, in fact attended by only 10 of the countries leaders.

But despite much talk of fighting terrorism, a news conference by
the 10 exposed an array of tensions, including between Putin and the
pro-Western Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

Saakashvili lashed out at Putin for Moscow’s ties with two breakaway
Georgian republics, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

“Russia can and should and should play a positive role in resolving
all post-Soviet conflicts including (in Georgia). All contacts should
be at a state level,” he said.

Georgia, which accuses Russia of encouraging separatism in its former
satellite state as a means of weakening Tbilisi, says this contradicts
Moscow’s tough stance against Chechen pro-independence rebels.

“These questions cannot be solved by double-standards,” he said.

Georgias anger at Moscows ties with Georgias break-away regions mounted
last month after Putin held talks with the self-declared prime minister
of Abkhazia ahead of controversial elections in the breakaway republic.

The spat worsened after Russia restored railway traffic between Moscow
and Abkhazia after a 12-year pause.

Putin, however, rounded on Georgia for its attempts to rein in the
renegade regions since Saakashvili came to power early this year
vowing to reunite his fractured country.

“An economic blockade, not to mention military pressure, do not result
in resolving problems,” he said.

The meeting in a vast, gilded palace newly built by Kazakh President
Nursultan Nazarbayev in Kazakhstans capital Astana ended with the
transfer to Russia of the leadership of the CIS after an 18-month
period in which Ukraine administered the group.

The strained post-meeting news conference also featured a series
of thinly veiled criticisms by Uzbekistans hardline President Islam
Karimov at Central Asian neighbours he blamed for being soft on groups
responsible for recent terror attacks in Uzbekistan that have left
dozens dead.

However Armenia and Azerbaijans presidents Robert Kocharian and Ilham
Aliyev, whose countries have been in a bitter stand-off since fighting
a war in the 1990s, took the opportunity to hold lengthy talks and
promised to keep up their dialogue.

Turkmenistan’s reclusive President Saparmurat Niyazov declined to
attend due to a prior medical appointment.

Moldovan leader Vladimir Voronin also stayed away, criticising the
body as ineffective.