#8
San Francisco Chronicle
April 3, 002
Kremlin angry as Radio Liberty airs
After delay, U.S.-financed broadcasts begin in Chechnya today
Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer

Moscow -- Today's premiere of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in the volatile North Caucasus region -- including breakaway Chechnya -- may sour U.S.-Russia relations, the Kremlin says.

"The launch of the service is likely to fuel extremism not only in Russia but elsewhere in the world, given the ties between Chechen terrorists and international terrorist groups," said Alexei Volin, the Putin administration's deputy chief of staff.

The U.S.-financed broadcast in local North Caucasus languages had been scheduled to begin in late February but was delayed at the request of the State Department on the ground that it could set back efforts to start a dialogue with Moscow on ending the Chechnya war, according to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

Some analysts, however, said Washington was more afraid of upsetting its budding partnership with Russia in the war against terrorism.

Russia, which is fighting its second war in separatist Chechnya since 1994, portrays Chechen rebels as terrorists who deserve no media coverage. Russian journalists generally accept the Kremlin's spin on the war -- that the army is fighting the good fight to rid the region of Islamic rebels.

"This move (by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) is incompatible with the common fight against terror and with the spirit of budding relations of partnership between Russia and the United States," read a Foreign Ministry statement handed to a senior U.S. diplomat yesterday.

"Launching specific propaganda broadcasts in the region, including Chechnya,

could seriously complicate efforts by the (Russian) government to stabilize the situation in the area."

The Russian military force has been accused of random detentions of Chechen civilians, arbitrary killings and demanding bribes for the release of imprisoned Chechens and even for dead bodies. These actions have been reported by Western journalists but have never been broadcast on Russian television.

The Kremlin says the U.S. view of the campaign, reflected by previous Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports, inflates the brutality of Russian troops and diminishes the atrocities committed by the rebels in the name of independence.

The few Chechens who have television sets are allowed to see only Russian reports based on information provided by the army. Moscow has set up a radio station that broadcasts in Chechen, but local citizens say the coverage is biased.

As a result, many Chechens who speak Russian have turned to the Russian services of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty or the BBC as their main source of news.

Tom Dine, president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, said the new service will provide "perspectives that you cannot get elsewhere" in Chechen, Avar and Circassian -- the languages spoken by ethnic groups in Chechnya and the republics of Dagestan and Karachayevo-Cherkessia.

"Our news will be of the region, produced by correspondents who are in the region," Dine said. "We'll be able to let people think things through in their own language."

Dine said the station plans to use correspondents based in Brussels, Grozny,

Chechnya's capital; Nazran, the capital of the republic of Ingushetia; and Dagestan's capital, Makhachkala. The two-hour broadcasts will be put together in Prague and transmitted from Istanbul.

The Kremlin's Volin, however, fears that some programming in Chechen will be done by "members of Chechen radical groups," an allegation Dine vehemently denies.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a private, nonprofit corporation that receives funds from the U.S. government. It was established in 1949 to spread pro-Western news to Eastern European countries and to promote democratic values and institutions. In 1975, it merged with Radio Liberty, which had been broadcasting in the Soviet Union.

The station became a symbol of democracy and free speech in the Soviet Union, where millions of people secretly listened to its broadcasts that were banned and jammed by the KGB.

When former President Boris Yeltsin came to power after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, he embraced the radio station and even signed a decree to create its Moscow-based Russian service.

The honeymoon ended after Russia sent troops into Chechnya for the second time more than two years ago. In 2000, Russian troops arrested and held for several weeks a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter named Andrei Babitsky, who had angered Moscow by frequently interviewing Chechen rebels.

When the U.S. Congress first opted last year to finance broadcasts to the North Caucasus region, the Kremlin called the decision "interference into Russia's internal affairs" and threatened to shut down the station's Russia service.

BACK TO THE TOP    #200 CONTENTS    NEXT SECTION