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Your support makes all the difference.A Kremlin peace plan to be imposed on Chechnya will exclude separatist rebels from any role in the process and will legally bind the tiny territory to Russia forever, President Vladimir Putin said yesterday.
In his toughest rejection of any contact with the elected Chechen President, Aslan Maskhadov, Mr Putin told a meeting in the Kremlin of pro-Moscow Chechen businessmen that last month's theatre siege proved there could be no dialogue with "scum".
Organisers of the popular musical Nord-Ost (North-East), which was brutally interrupted by Chechen terrorists, staged moving memorial concerts at the weekend. The show was renamed "North-East, we are with you" for the occasion, in memory of the 128 victims who died, nearly all of them from the poison gas used by Russian forces to end the siege.
Mr Putin said: "Those who choose Maskhadov choose war. Those who propose negotiating with that murderer might as well suggest reaching an agreement with [al-Qa'ida and Taliban leaders, Osama] bin Laden and Mullah Omar."
The Kremlin plan for Chechnya involves holding a referendum on a new constitution for the mainly Muslim Caucasus republic of about one million, followed by elections to a regional parliament.
Under federal law, ethnic republics are forbidden to secede and their constitutions merely spell out the division of powers with central authority. Mr Putin said: "Citizens must understand what a Chechen settlement means. The issue here is maintaining the integrity of the Russian state."
Human rights activists have been warning for months that the Kremlin's plans may involve forcibly repatriating an estimated 200,000 Chechen refugees who have fled to neighbouring areas to escape the fighting, devastation and brutal zachistki – security sweeps by Russian forces.
Last week Russian media reported that the 503rd Motorised Rifle Division, a crack army unit, had been ordered to surround several refugee camps in Ingushetia, which could be a prelude to a resettlement effort. Aid workers say electricity, water and food supplies to camps are being gradually cut off by authorities.
Moscow's hand-picked administrator for Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, said the referendum could be held in the spring, followed later by legislative elections. He added that "terrorists" would be barred from running for office.
Mr Putin said: "Instead of talks, Maskhadov has chosen the path of terror and stands behind the scum who took hundreds of people hostage."
The Kremlin has yet to present convincing evidence that Mr Maskhadov, a secular nationalist elected in Chechnya's only democratic poll in 1997, had any connection with last month's mass hostage-taking. Mr Maskhadov did condemn the raid, but only after special forces had stormed the theatre.
A leading Chechen warlord, Shamil Basayev, has claimed responsibility for organising the theatre attack and insisted he had done so without Mr Maskhadov's knowledge.
A website that speaks for Mr Maskhadov said at the weekend that Mr Basayev had been stripped of all his posts in the independent Chechen government and was under investigation by the republic's Supreme Sharia Court for his role in the theatre attack.
Many experts say that any political settlement that does not involve Mr Maskhadov and provide some measure of independence for Chechnya is doomed to fail, as did a similar Russian-installed government and "elected" legislature during the first Chechnya war from 1994-96.
About 200 peace activists meeting in Moscow at the weekend called on the Kremlin to respond to the hostage tragedy by seeking dialogue with the separatist rebels.
"We need to hold negotiations, and this must include talks with those who are putting up armed resistance," said Leonid Gozman, a liberal deputy of the state duma.
Otto Latsis, editor of the independent Novoye Gazeta newspaper, said: "The only thing that can force the Kremlin to make peace would be pressure from public opinion, but this does not exist [in the wake of the theatre attack]."
In a new tactic, apparently copied from Israel, Russian special forces dynamited a house belonging to one of the 19 female "suicide bombers" who took part in the Moscow theatre attack. The woman's family were given just a few minutes to evacuate their home, in the Chechen town of Achkoi-Martan, on Friday.
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