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| Russia |
| Putin says al-Qaeda involved with Chechen festivities |
| 2004-09-01 |
| And he's probably right ... Russian President Vladimir Putin linked last week's mid-air destruction of two passenger airliners to the Al-Qaeda network and said it was evidence of international terrorism on Russian soil in Chechnya. "The fact that an international terrorist organization linked to Al-Qaeda took responsibility for the blowing up of two planes shows once again the link between destructive elements in Chechnya and international terrorism," Putin said here. A group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades claimed responsibility in an Internet posting for the downing of the planes and warned they would carry out further operations in the future "to back and assist our brothers in Chechnya." Putin, flanked by French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, did not say whether he was referring to that group and, if so, whether authorities had independently established ties between that group and Al-Qaeda. Putin said Russia "has fought, is fighting and will continue to fight" separatist rebels in Chechnya, a Russian republic in the Caucasus that has been wracked by war with federal forces for most of the past decade. But he added that Moscow was prepared "to continue dialogue with any forces interested in a political solution in Chechnya," a comment that coincided with remarks published in a newspaper Tuesday from the republic's newly-elected leader. The United States on Monday slammed the vote a day earlier in Chechnya in which a Kremlin-anointed career police officer was elected to lead the republic and called for an end to human rights abuses there "committed by all parties." The visiting leaders of France and Germany however declined to press Putin on the issue and instead gave him a wide diplomatic berth for dealing with it as he saw fit. "A political solution is necessary and this is what Russia wants," Chirac said of Chechnya. "But a political solution has a limit," he added. "It is a limit that everyone can understand and that no one can seriously contest ... the territorial unity of the Russian Federation". |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |