Patten turns heat on Russia summit critics

Date: 14/11/02

By Peter Chapman

CHRIS Patten, the external relations commissioner, has reacted with fury to coverage of Monday's EU-Russia summit which claimed that the European Union had turned its back on human rights abuses in Chechnya during the 11 November talks.

He said the media had got things 'badly wrong' by suggesting that the EU had kept quiet about Chechnya to avoid jeopardising a vital deal with Russia on its Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad.

The accord will allow citizens in Russia and Kaliningrad to use transit documents rather than expensive visas to travel through Lithuania, due to become a member state in 2004.

Failure to reach a deal would have left open one of the final obstacles to enlargement and news organisations indicated that this, not Chechnya, was the priority for the Danish EU presidency.

But Patten said the EU had still gone all out to highlight concerns over Chechnya. 'They [the media] suggested that because we were very much focused on getting an agreement on Kaliningrad we didn't address the question of human rights in Chechnya,' said Patten.

'I have now been to seven summit meetings between the EU and Russia, out of the ten which have been held so far. I have to say that no presidency in my experience has raised Chechnya as comprehensively and as vigorously as the Danish prime minister did. We had an extremely vigorous exchange.

'There wasn't a meeting of minds but the suggestion that this presidency had not raised the issue on behalf of the European Union or had not raised it sufficiently vigorously is the exact reverse of the truth.'

Patten also rejected claims that the EU had been 'too weak' in raising the concerns of humanitarian organisations about the way they can act in Chechnya and in neighbouring Ingushetia.

'The fact that you have an important strategic relationship with another country, the fact that you are trying to sort out problems with another country should not ever in my view stop you raising questions which that country may find difficult or sensitive,' added Patten.

Despite the commissioner's robust reaction, humanitarian issues were hardly touched on at the post-summit press conference by Putin, Danish premier Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Commission President Romano Prodi and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

On the Chechen crisis, Rasmussen said the EU supported a 'political solution', but did not publicly press Putin further on alleged breaches of human rights by Russian troops. Putin said he agreed that a political solution would be best, but insisted Russia would not cut deals with terrorists such as the gunmen whose hijack of a Moscow theatre ended with a gas attack by security forces that left nearly 200 dead.

The Russian president said 'so-called freedom fighters' were terrorising Russians and threatening nuclear installations.

The only open discord came when Rasmussen chided Putin over his heavy-handed opposition to the recent World Chechen Congress in Copenhagen.

Putin's anger over Denmark's failure to ban the conference led to the EU-Russia summit being switched from Copenhagen to Brussels. Rasmussen said: 'The Danish government is bound to protect the freedom of speech and assembly.'

Putin sat stony faced, but Romano Prodi could clearly be seen offering a wink of approval to the Dane.

Under the Kaliningrad deal, Russians will be able to apply from next July for transit documents for travelling through Lithuania - which must apply EU immigration rules ahead of membership of the Union in 2004. The EU will also consider the feasibility of non-stop trains to Russia from Kaliningrad, which would avoid the need for the new papers.

Chris Patten, the external relations commissioner, has reacted with fury to coverage of the EU-Russia summit, 11 November 2002, which claimed that the European Union had turned its back on human rights abuses in Chechnya during the talks.