Putin likened demands by Washington that Moscow negotiate with the separatists in Chechnya -- where rebels are believed to have planned the school siege -- to the U.S. talking to the terrorists behind the September 11, 2001 attacks.
On this one, I agree with Putin.
The Russians have killed something like 25% of the Chechens including 40 thousand kids.
Putin wants to blame this on either international terrorism or even possibly a state supporting terrorism.
This may or may not be true. The Russians have done a lot to drive the Chechens over the edge.
One of the head Chechens claims that this outrage was perpetrated by Enguish people--a small Muslim group that was driven out of N. Ossetia some years ago.
The Russians have tried to depict all Chechens who want independence as terrorists. Now when the rage comes home to Roose, Putin is blaming international terrorism so his Chechnya policies aren't blamed. His spokesman (stooge?) claimed there were NO Chechens among the terrorists.
Check this out, esp. the article called "Who Condemns Terrorism."
http://www.rferl.org/newsline/1-rus.asp
PUTIN SAYS RUSSIA FACES 'TOTAL WAR' WITH TERRORISM...
Speaking in a televised address following the bloody hostage drama in the North Ossetian town of Beslan, President Vladimir Putin said on 4 September that the series of terrorist acts in recent weeks means that Russia faces "total and full-scale war," kremlin.ru reported. " What we are dealing with are not isolated acts intended to frighten us, not isolated terrorist attacks. What we are facing is direct intervention of international terror directed against Russia," he said. "This is a challenge not to the president, parliament, or government, but to all of Russia, to all our people." Putin admitted that Russia has inadequate defenses and has failed to adapt to new challenges. "We demonstrated our weakness, and the weak are beaten." Putin didn't mention Chechnya, but said that the attacks on Russia have support from abroad. "Some want to tear off a big chunk of our country and others are helping them. They are helping them in the belief that Russia, as one of the greatest nuclear powers of the world, still poses a threat to them and, therefore, this threat has to be eliminated. Terrorism is their only tool," he said. Finally, Putin said that soon he will prepare "a range of measures designed to strengthen the unity of the country." He also called for the creation of "a new system to better coordinate forces and means for maintaining control in the North Caucasus" and for "more effective crisis management." VY
...AND PROMISES TO PUNISH ATTEMPTS AT REVENGE ON ETHNIC GROUNDS...
Earlier on 4 September, President Putin said during a brief visit to the site of the hostage taking in Beslan that North Ossetia was not chosen randomly as a target for terrorist attack, but as the "southern outpost of Russia" in the region, RTR and ORT reported. Addressing North Ossetian officials, Putin said that "one of the tasks pursued by the terrorists was to stoke ethnic hatred, to blow up the whole of our North Caucasus." He added, "Anyone who feels sympathetic toward such provocations will be viewed as accomplices of terrorists and terrorism. Please, keep this in mind." The predominately Christian North Ossetia is surrounded by Russian provinces populated mainly by Muslims. Putin also announced that he ordered the closure of North Ossetia's borders with neighboring republics and with Georgia. VY
...AS ADVISER SAYS THAT HOSTAGE TAKERS 'RECEIVED ORDERS FROM ABROAD'
Aslanbek Aslakhanov, President Putin's adviser on the North Caucasus who for three days was in Beslan maintaining telephone contact with the hostage takers, said on 6 September that during the siege the militants had satellite-telephone communications with people abroad and received their instructions from there, RTR reported. Aslakhanov, a Chechen whose presence for the talks was demanded by the hostage takers, said: "They weren't Chechens. When I spoke Chechen, they said: 'We don't understand. Talk Russian.' So I did. But they did have a Caucasian accent." Aslakhanov added that the hostage takers were very well trained and had learned lessons from the hostage taking at the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow in October 2002: They came to Beslan with gas masks and two dogs, and the first thing they did was break windows to prevent the use of sleeping gas, he said. VY
BESLAN DEATH TOLL TOPS 350
As of 6 September, the number of people killed during the initial stages of the Beslan hostage taking and during the shoot-out on 3 September had risen to 335 hostages and troops, plus 30 hostage takers; 411 people remain hospitalized, Russian media reported. More than 100 people are still missing. The death toll in the 2002 Moscow theater hostage taking was 129. Confusion still surrounds the events on 3 September that impelled Russian elite troops to storm the school building. Some eyewitnesses claim that the troops attacked the school after two explosions were heard inside, others say the hostage takers opened fire at Emergency Situations Ministry personnel whom the hostage takers had given permission to remove the bodies of dead hostages from the school yard, while former Ingushetian President Ruslan Aushev told "Novaya gazeta" on 6 September that parents of hostages opened fire on the hostage takers. LF
SURVIVING HOSTAGE TAKER IMPLICATES CHECHEN PRESIDENT...
Russian Deputy Prosecutor-General Sergei Fridinskii said on 3 September that two of the hostage takers, whom he claimed included Arabs as well as Chechens, Ingush, and Ossetians, were captured alive. On 6 September, RTR broadcast footage of a man it identified as the sole surviving hostage taker, Nur-Pasha Kulaev. Kulaev claimed a man known as "Colonel" ordered him and his fellow hostage takers to attack the school in Beslan, and that "they told us this task had been set" by Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov and radical field commander Shamil Basaev. Kulaev apparently did not explain whom he meant by "they." The "Colonel" reportedly said the aim of the hostage taking was to unleash a war across the entire Caucasus. In an interview with RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service on 7 September, Maskhadov's representative Akhmed Zakaev said the confession of the man shown on Russian television was clearly obtained under torture. He said claims of Maskhadov's involvement in the hostage taking, and the allegations that the hostage takers also included Arabs and African mercenaries, are "part of a well-planned disinformation campaign." Zakaev said the hostage taking was carried out by "local radical groups" that are supported by people overwhelmed by the need for personal revenge for the brutalities committed by the Russian Army. LF
...WHO CONDEMNS TERRORISM
The Chechen leadership resolutely condemns the school hostage taking in Beslan, the downing of two Russian passenger aircraft, and the suicide bombing in Moscow, Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov said in a statement posted on 5 September on the chechenpress.info website. He reiterated his earlier condemnation of terrorist acts aimed at civilians, stressing that such actions hinder international recognition of Chechnya as an independent state. Maskhadov laid the blame for the Beslan hostage taking on President Putin's Chechnya policy, a policy that, Maskhadov noted, has cost the lives over the past decade of one-quarter of the Chechen population, including some 40,000 children. But Russian brutality, Maskhadov continued, does not justify waging war on women and children, and any Chechens who do so are no better than the Russian troops. In the name of preserving the moral purity of the Chechen people, Maskhadov appealed to Chechens to disassociate themselves from the few who, crazed by the desire for revenge, stoop to acts of terrorism. LF
RUSSIAN ELITE ANTITERROR UNITS SUFFER WORST CASUALTIES IN ITS HISTORY
In the same 6 September interview with RTR, presidential adviser Aslakhanov said that the Federal Security Service's (FSB) elite Vympel and Alfa antiterrorism units suffered their worst losses in a single operation in their 30 years of existence. Twenty officers of the units were killed and more than 20 others were wounded. Aslakhanov, who was a member of the operation staff in Beslan, added that the reason for the high losses was the fact that the storming of the building was not planned and there was no order to storm it. Everything happened spontaneously as two charges planted by the militants inside the building exploded and some of the hostages used the opportunity to escape, and the hostage takers opened fire. Federal forces returned fire to cover the escapees, Aslakhanov said. An unnamed wounded colonel of the Alfa unit told RTR, ORT, and "Komsomolskaya pravda" on 6 September that the first to open fire were Ossetian irregulars, among whom were many fathers of child hostages. At the time of the incident, Alfa officers were not wearing body armor in order to show the militants that they didn't intend to rush the school. During the fighting, Alfa officers were very reserved in using firepower as the hostage takers were using hostages as human shields at all times, the colonel said. VY
Snip
http://www.rferl.org/features/features_Article.aspx?m=09&y=2004&id=616BE8CE-C3B2-4232-B50B-B5E9C172C9DA
Moscow-based political scientist Andrei Piontkovskii believes the way in which these recent attacks have been conducted does point to a possible new alliance between some of the Chechen separatists and Al-Qaeda. Piontkovskii places much of the blame for this development with Putin himself.
Piontkovskii said that after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, the Russian president claimed Chechen separatist leaders were linked to Al-Qaeda, and used the explanation as a pretext for not opening negotiations. Piontkovskii calls this policy short-sighted and says it may have forced the Chechen resistance to follow precisely that path, after seeing all other avenues to compromise closed.
"We must all understand who our adversary is. What is characteristic about all these latest terror attacks is that no one has presented any demands. And if someone has taken responsibility for these blasts, it is some murky organization belonging to the worldwide network of Islamic terrorism. What is happening before our eyes is that a large part of the Chechen resistance is joining the ranks of this worldwide network of Islamic terrorism and becoming its reservists. And this is the result of our clumsy policies over the past several years in Chechnya," Piontkovskii said.
Piontkovskii's recipe for salvaging the situation and ending the latest wave of terrorism in Russia is to reverse course and open talks with key figures in the Chechen separatist leadership -- to offer them a way out of their corner and to stop playing into the hand of Al-Qaeda.
"On the one hand, [we need] a merciless war against global terrorism and on the other hand, [we need] maximum flexibility and an attempt to forge maximum compromise with that part of the Chechen resistance which distances itself from these acts, which presents demands which may appear unacceptable but which one can discuss. Concretely, I am speaking about holding talks with [Aslan] Maskhadov, [Akhmed] Zakaev, [Ilyas] Akhmadov, and others. This would not be bowing to terrorism, it would be an attempt to isolate this dangerous global Islamic terrorism," Piontkovskii said.