Posted on 01/24/2002 8:59:39 AM PST by Pericles
Thursday January 24 11:04 AM ET
Russia Blasts U.S. 'Unfriendly Step' on Chechnya
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia accused the United States on Thursday of an ``unfriendly step'' in receiving an envoy representing Chechen separatists, and urged Washington to stand by its commitment to fight terrorism.
The Foreign Ministry said it had been surprised by the Washington meeting on Wednesday between a State Department official and Ilyas Akhmadov, ``foreign minister'' of Chechnya's separatist leaders.
``...Such contacts, no matter what the justification, cannot be seen as anything other than an unfriendly step toward Russia, contradicting the spirit of cooperation and partnership of both countries in acting against international terrorism,'' a ministry statement said.
It said there was increasing proof of links between Chechen separatists, whom Russia has been battling in two post-Soviet campaigns, and Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda group the United States has been fighting in Afghanistan.
``Linked to this there is one question: whether the American side is finding itself in the grip of old stereotypes and continues to divide terrorists into 'good ones' and 'bad ones,''' the statement said.
Russia used almost identical language in a protest to Britain earlier this week over a London meeting between a Foreign Office official and a representative of rebel Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov.
A Maskhadov envoy met a Kremlin representative at a Moscow airport last November, for the only peace talks in two-and-a-half years of war. But no one has since returned to the negotiating table.
Akhmed Zakayev, the separatist envoy, told Reuters on Thursday that the rebels were in telephone contact with the Kremlin. But there are no immediate plans to relaunch talks.
Moscow has been engaged in its second post-Soviet military campaign in Chechnya since 1999, after two years of fighting ended in 1996 with an embarrassing withdrawal.
Russian troops now control most of Chechnya on the country's southern flank and have installed pro-Moscow local authorities. But rebels regularly attack Russian army convoys, and scores of pro-Moscow officials have been killed in explosions or ambushes.
Putin's support for the U.S.-led anti-terrorist drive and insistence that Chechen fighters were linked to the Al Qaeda group held responsible for the September 11 airline attacks led to a softening of Western criticism of Russia's military drive.
But as the Afghan campaign winds down, Western countries, including the United States, have resumed criticism of Moscow's tactics, accusing Russian troops of using excessive force.
This isn't supposed to be that sort of a forum....
The best explanation can be found in my BIN LADEN LINK and my thesis for why we are linked to these Islamic rebels is to be read here. I hope I do a decent job of explaning it all.
The State Dept will not respond unless pushed to respond. Call your congressman.
For once Foggy Bottom within striking distance of the learning curve about Chechnya. Recent insurgent successes have stunned Moscow and sent reverberations through Russian society that threaten to collapse the paper tiger's weak economy and open the doors of anarchy as in 1917.
Ilyas Akhmadov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, was born in Khazakstan in 1960. His family deported there in 1957 with some 95 per cent of the Chechen population -- returned home in 1962. Of the 600,000 Chechens deported, some 200,000 died before they could return.
In 1978 he departed for Volgograd and the Polytechnical school there where he completed two years of the five year course. Against his father's wishes he joined the military in May 1981. Six months enlisted before entering sergeant's school at Kapustinyar before being assigned to a ballistic missile testing range as an NCO.
Reenlisting he taught Military Science before attending Rostov Na-Donau University to take his Red Diploma in Political Science in 1991. Since then he has had many adventures too numerous to recount here...
Needless to say he his more than a match for an ex-KGB thug in a cheap suit and a bad haircut. He speaks better French than Putin, and is considered something of an expert on Brahms by the European diplomatic community...
And the babbling Western press want to describe him as a "terrorist?" Hah, hah ... that is an absolute scream -- and would be funny if it did not speak entire volumes about America's ignorance of what is really going on now in Chechnya...
Russia on the ropes now since the recent Chechen counter-offensive directed by that brilliant strategist, democratically elected president Aslan Maskhadov. In conjunction with Khattab's breakout from the Argun Gorge, Chechen forces now threaten to overrun Grozny and Gudermes...
Moscow in a panic now and DC quick to reestablish relations with president Maskhadov's representatives. Inside the beltway they can still smell a winner...
Dry is good and wind is better...
If you want to choke an Oxford Don over the grilled sole at his club, one must only bring up the true story of the death of Lord Kitchener in 1916. K of K's secret mission to Russia -- where he would help establish the White Russians as a legitimate force opposite Lenin -- would no doubt have changed history and prevented the rise of Communism if successful. But Kitchener's ship went down in the Irish Sea under "mysterious" circumstances...
Lost to history is the magnificent South African Joubert, who having seen his family raped by British soldiers during the Boer War -- swore a lifetime of revenge on the British Empire...
Only in the deepest British archives does the story remain of how Joubert, having volunteered to work for German intelligence during the war -- journied on that fateful ship and signalled from its bow a waiting German U-boat. Said U-boat sending Kitchener and his secret mission on a one way trip to hell -- as Joubert dove over the side and eventually made his way to South America...
Now a 21st century Joubert prepares to redirect the streaming flow of history in a similar fashion. His name is Shamil Basayev -- and he has sworn a holy vow to Allah to take Russia down...
Yeah, you might say they want to listen to Ilyas Akhmadov in DC right now. He's got a couple of things to say...
The forces of freedom on the move. Europe trembles.
What's his name? Is he a Clinton appointee?
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