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Putin warns over heavy-handed action in Chechnya
November 5, 2002
By Richard Balmforth
MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin called Tuesday for Russia's security services to work out new ways of combating "terrorism," but he bluntly told his army not to launch massive indiscriminate operations in rebel Chechnya.
On a visit to southern Russia, Putin said the mass hostage seizure by Chechen rebels in Moscow last month had shown the need for "new approaches" to deal with such security challenges.
The seizure of more than 700 hostages in a Moscow theater by separatist rebels ended after a 58-hour siege with Russian special forces storming the building in a raid that killed 118 hostages and most of the 50 rebels dead.
But, speaking after his defense minister announced broad new military operations in breakaway Chechnya, Putin said: "They must be of a well-directed, targeted nature. There must be no large-scale massive measures.
"This would be harmful and impermissible," he said.
But the Kremlin chief, speaking in Adygeya region, otherwise maintained his tough stance over Chechnya, a North Caucasus territory where Russian forces have been embroiled in war against separatists for most of the past eight years.
"The quicker we rid ourselves of the terrorists, the quicker the situation will normalize in Chechnya," he said in televised remarks during a meeting with Akhmad Kadyrov, head of the Moscow-sponsored Chechnya administration.
The Kremlin has slammed the door on peace talks to end the decades-long conflict in Chechnya despite the theater siege in the heart of Moscow that traumatized Russia.
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov announced tough new operations in Chechnya last Sunday to smash "new acts of terror."
Since then Russian forces have hunted Chechen "suicide fighters" in the breakaway region and residents there have expressed fears of a Draconian security clampdown.
A human rights group said police in Moscow had been picking up and holding hundreds of ethnic Chechens for hours and sometimes days in arbitrary sweep operations since the theater siege.
"There is an atmosphere of revenge, of collective responsibility," Svetlana Gannushkina of human rights organization Memorial told a news conference.
PUTIN MEETING EU
Putin's emphasis on targeted military action and security measures carried out within the law seemed aimed at reassuring western governments which have voiced concern in the past at massive use of force and alleged rights abuses by the army in Chechnya.
Putin, in what will be his first international outing since the Moscow theater drama, travels to Brussels Nov. 11 for a summit with the European Union at which Chechnya is likely to be a hot topic.
Meanwhile, Denmark's justice minister, on a visit to Moscow Tuesday, was handed new evidence by Russian authorities to support their demand for the extradition of a prominent Chechen separatist.
EU-member Denmark, at Russia's request, detained Akhmed Zakayev, the top aide to fugitive rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, only days after the end of the Moscow siege but has insisted on more evidence before handing him over.
The Danish minister, Lene Espersen, said Denmark would study the dossier given her by Russian justice authorities before making a decision.
Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after 20 months of fierce fighting which cost thousands of lives.
But Putin sent them back in again in 1999 after attacks in neighboring Dagestan and after nearly 300 people died in bomb attacks on apartment blocks in Russian cities that Moscow blamed on the rebels.
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