Chechen rebels force war back into public eye

Date: 11/01/1996

CHECHEN rebels have taken hostages again to bring their point home to Moscow, and the EU seems to have got the message.

Diplomats in Brussels are preparing the ground for discussions on the conflict at a meeting of the Political Committee this weekend, and Italy's ambassador to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) plans to address the 53-state organisation in Vienna on behalf of his EU partners.

The flurry of activity follows a long period of silence. Since the EU embarked on a new, Moscow-friendly strategy for Russia and crowned it with a package of trade concessions last year, the EU has been virtually silent on a war that has left thousands dead.

Only German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel seemed not to have forgotten the conflict. On Christmas Day, Kinkel wrote to the then Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev appealing for a cease-fire and a peaceful settlement. Last week, he urged a team of mediators from the OSCE to return to Chechnya.

The team fled last month when fighting flared as separatists took over Chechnya's second largest city, Gudermes, to protest against Moscow's attempt to hold local elections in Chechnya. Some 300 civilians were reported killed in a week of heavy fighting and a Russian blockade against relief workers.

The OSCE team went back to the capital city, Grozny, on 5 January, but a week later, aides to Foreign Affairs Commissioner Hans van den Broek still had no news. The EU has no mediators in the region, relying mainly on the OSCE team to conduct peace efforts and supply information. An OSCE official in Vienna said, however, that EU member states and the European Commission, which also has a representative there, were very active in discussions on Chechnya.

Italy's OSCE ambassador Mario Sica said EU governments favoured enlarging the OSCE mission to about ten from its current six people and expanding its mandate to allow the organisation to ensure that humanitarian aid moves freely, as well as engaging in its current task of encouraging political dialogue.

As for the silence, Sica said: “We have a way of doing things that is not public.”

But Commission officials say they are “very preoccupied with the stalemate”, although they add that EU authorities are not yet desperate and no sanctions are being planned against Moscow.

Since Russian President Boris Yeltsin sent 40,000 Russian troops into Chechnya in December 1994 to crush an independence movement there, the war has claimed 20,000 lives. The fighting stalled EU plans to agree an interim accord with Russia, the planned first step of an eventual partnership and cooperation pact. But the interim agreement, comprised mainly of trade benefits, was approved in July, and in November, foreign ministers agreed a new strategy for the giant nation. Since then, the Commission has focused on the “action plan” for implementing that strategy.