#6521 #6522
#2 - JRL 6521
Moscow mourns, U.S. envoy criticizes gas secrecy
October 29, 2002
By Jon Boyle
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A grieving Russia buried the first victims of the Moscow theater siege Tuesday, but the U.S. ambassador said some might still be alive if the Kremlin had been less secretive about a gas that poisoned them.
After days of U.S. praise for Putin's handling of the siege, ambassador Alexander Vershbow criticized the mystery surrounding the gas that killed 115 hostages when it was pumped into the city center theater to stun their Chechen captors.
A total of 245 survivors remain hospitalized, news agencies quoted health officials as saying, 16 of them in serious condition. Altogether, 418 people have been discharged.
In a reminder that the war in Chechnya was far from over, separatists there shot down a Russian military helicopter, killing four servicemen. The 50 rebels who seized the Moscow theater had demanded a Russian pullout from the southern province.
But despite controversy over the death toll and the secrecy over the gas, President Vladimir Putin was credited with huge support in the first poll conducted since the crisis erupted.
Eighty-five percent of respondents backed Putin's handling of the siege, with just 10 percent sharply critical, according to the survey conducted by the VTsIOM agency.
All but two of the 117 hostages who died were killed by the gas used by special Russian troops Saturday to end the three-day siege.
"To the best of our knowledge ... we do think it was an opiate," Vershbow told a news briefing.
"We regret that the lack of information contributed to the confusion after the immediate operation to free the hostages was over. It's clear that with perhaps a little more information at least a few more of the hostages may have survived."
A U.S. citizen, Sandy Booker, died in Saturday's dawn raid to free the hostages. His mother in Oklahoma said he had been in Moscow to see his Russian fiancee.
MINISTER WANTS TIGHTER SECURITY
The helicopter was downed as Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia needed tighter security to thwart further attacks.
"We admit that the threat of terrorism against Russia, including the threat from abroad, is strengthening and we cannot but react to this fact," he told state Rossiya television after Putin met security ministers.
Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov said several dozen suspects had been rounded up since the weekend in an "unprecedented drive to track down terrorists."
Under gray skies, the first victims were buried, including Alexei Bochkov, 25, laid to rest in Moscow's vast Kuzmenskoye cemetery. Some 200 silent mourners bearing carnations attended.
His mother, Yelena, in her late 50s, kissed his forehead for the last time and cried: "My Alyosha. We'll remember you forever, forever, forever. God forgive us all."
Anatoly Lazin, head of the company for which Bochkov worked, said: "He died from that gas, but who knows really what it was?"
Officials have refused to tell even doctors treating freed hostages what gas was used. Some Western experts have suggested the gas may have contained nerve agent BZ, not opiates.
Opiates work specifically on pain receptors, but an additional effect is sleepiness, and high doses can cause respiratory failure, a Western doctor in Moscow told Reuters.
Security forces said they used the gas to knock out the hostage-takers. Many subsequently were believed shot by troops rushing into the building, which the rebels had threatened to blow up.
Doctors said three days of captivity, with little food or water, had made the hostages vulnerable to the toxic agent, especially the young and elderly. Many died of heart or respiratory failure.
CALL FOR INQUIRY
The liberal Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) demanded a parliamentary inquiry into the decision to storm the theater and security lapses that allowed more than 50 guerrillas, heavily armed and laden with explosives, to launch the audacious attack.
Mainstream separatist Chechen leaders ended a congress in Copenhagen Tuesday by giving a mandate to Ruslan Khasbulatov, a former Russian parliament speaker and a Chechen, to try to persuade both Russia and its Chechen rebel foes to talk peace.
They have condemned the hostage-taking but also accuse Russian forces of brutality away from the world's gaze.
They warned that Russia's nuclear facilities could be the target of future attacks unless the Kremlin began meaningful peace talks rather than seeking to impose a pro-Moscow government in Chechnya, a Muslim region of southern Russia.
Vershbow said the United States viewed the war in Chechnya as a separatist struggle "exploited by international terrorist groups who have seen this as part of their global agenda."
"But in the process of accepting this tactical alliance with international terrorists the Chechens have to some degree compromised their own cause," he added.
Back to the Top Next Article
Oct. 30, 2002:
#6520 #6521 #6522
- Back to the Top -