Chechnya just one of many EU-Russia issues

By David Cronin

Date: 30/10/03

“WHOSE rights are we abusing?”.Vladimir Putin asked during a visit to Brussels in October 2001. “Give me names, records, family names.”

The Russian president was responding angrily to a press query about Chechnya. But almost two years later he has been furnished with the details sought. Human rights group Memorial has published a report, listing 489 people, mostly non-combatants, killed in Chechnya in July-December 2000 - a time when Russia's main push into the breakaway republic had been concluded.

Unlike Putin, the EU's top political figures have long acknowledged that international human rights standards are not being upheld in the Chechen conflict. Officials involved in preparations for next week's EU-Russia summit in Rome (6 November) say the delegation led by Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi will be making its concerns over Chechnya plain.

However, it is unclear whether there will be any reference to Chechnya in a joint statement due to be issued after the gathering. While Moscow is keen to avoid any contretemps over the issue, its omission from the final communiqué is expected to arouse suspicions that the Union is overlooking the grave violations in Chechnya. “We keep getting assurances that the EU is insisting on every occasion that there must be investigations into human rights abuses,”.says Gabriele Juen from Amnesty International.

“But the EU has done little to prove that it is really insisting on improvements.”

On Tuesday (28 October) the status of EU-Russia relations was upgraded when the inaugural meeting of the Permanent Partnership Council took place.

Yet the reality is that Chechnya is part of a range of issues over which there are serious disagreements. The thorny questions are subject to debate within the EU institutions about how they can be resolved without rancour. They are:

• Climate change: before the Kyoto protocol on averting climate change can enter into force, it must be ratified by industrialized countries who account for 55% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. With the US obstinately refusing to accept its provisions on cutting CO2 discharges, Russia holds the key to its future. But Putin has stalled on ratifying;
• Moldova: in 1999, Russia pledged to remove its troops from Moldova by the end of 2002. However, it still has a 2,600-strong force in the trans-Dniester region. This troubles the EU, as it will share a border with Moldova from 2007, when Romania is set to join the Union;
• visas: the Russians are advocating that their citizens should be allowed to stay in the EU for up to three months without a visa. However, the Union is unwilling to contemplate that notion for the time being, as it feels controls on Russia's external borders are inadequate;
• enlargement: Moscow believes that ethnic Russians in Latvia and Estonia, both of which are due to enter the Union next year, face systematic discrimination. While the EU admits that this is a problem, it accuses Russia of failing to acknowledge the improvements the two Baltic states have made - for example, in promoting bilingual education. The issue is so serious that Russia has indicated it is unwilling to extend its current partnership and cooperation agreement with the EU to the Baltic states, when they become members, even though Union officials say this should be done automatically, and;
• trade: Chris Patten this week said Russia must respect the rule of law to forge closer trade ties with the EU. The external relations commissioner was referring to the controversy over the arrest of Mikhail Khodorovsky, head of oil giant Yukos and Russia's richest man, on fraud charges.

Article considers human rights in Chechnya, and the state of EU-Russia relations.

http://www.eeas.europa.eu/russia/index_en.htm http://www.eeas.europa.eu/russia/index_en.htm

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