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'Free hostages, you'll be safe'
25/10/2002 15:55 - (SA)
Oliver Bullough and Clara Ferreira-Marques
Moscow - Russia pledged on Friday not to kill Chechen rebels holding about 700 hostages in a Moscow theatre if they freed all their captives.
"We are holding and will keep holding talks...If all hostages are released, the terrorists will be guaranteed their lives," Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Russia's security service FSB, said after meeting President Vladimir Putin.
A Chechen "suicide squad" freed eight children on Friday after releasing seven other hostages, but is still keeping about 700 people hostage in a theatre rigged with explosives, demanding Russia to pull its troops out of their homeland.
The rebels have threatened to blow up the building if security forces storm it.
The children, aged between six and 12, were led to safety by members of the International Committee of the Red Cross and, a Red Cross official said, they were in good health.
About 40 heavily armed Chechen guerrillas seized the theatre in southeast Moscow on Wednesday night.
Diplomats waited for the rebels to honour a pledge to free about 75 foreigners among their hostages on Friday, including Australians, Austrians, Britons, Germans and three Americans.
But as officials from various embassies arrived at and left the theatre, there was no word as to their fate.
The siege, which drew international condemnation, dealt a blow to Putin, whose meteoric rise to power was built largely on his decision to send troops back into breakaway Chechnya in southern Russia in October 1999.
Putin said on Thursday his priority was to save the lives of the hostages and he called the rebel operation a "terrorist act planned abroad".
Russian agencies said Putin was seeking advice from FSB chief Patrushev on Friday on how Western special forces handled such crises.
Against a background of reports of anti-Chechen incidents in Russia, Putin appealed to his people not to take revenge attacks on Chechen civilians, thousands of whom live across the country.
"Don't allow yourself to be pushed into illegal action. We have no right to allow events to take a negative turn," he said in televised comments.
Conditions have been growing grimmer by the hour inside the theatre where the hostages use the orchestra pit as a toilet and supplies of food and medicines are low.
"Many are suffering from stress, of course they are. Can anyone imagine living under those conditions?" Dr Leonid Roshal, the chairperson of the International Committee for Paediatric Disasters who spent about six hours in the theatre, said.
"They don't know whether the troops will storm the building, whether they will be shot or not...They don't know what is going to happen," he said, adding that officials were trying to get in medical supplies, toilet paper and food.
A woman being held inside the theatre said the hostages' nerves were at breaking point.
"It feels like something bad is hanging in the air," Anna Andrianova told Ekho Moskvy radio.
"People are starting feeling very bad."
Hopes for release of hostages
Earlier FSB official Sergei Ignatchenko said seven Russian hostages were freed, before the eight children were released.
"We hope in the very near future that the terrorists will release more hostages, children, women and people who are in a difficult physical condition," he said.
The rebels, who say they are prepared to die, killed a woman who tried to escape during the initial assault on Wednesday.
NTV television broadcast film showing the man behind the attack, Movsar Barayev - a relative of Chechen field commander Arbi Barayev, who Russia says it has killed.
Guerrillas accompanying Barayev, including two black-clad hooded women, were armed with AK-47 assault rifles and pistols. Ammunition pouches and grenades swung from their belts.
Theatre spokesperson Yelena Malyonkina said: "There is a big bomb in the centre of the hall. The stage is mined as well as all the passage ways. Fifteen guerrillas who are covered with explosives are on duty in the hall. They watch all possible directions from which a storming of the building may start."
The crisis forced Putin to scrap a meeting with US President George W Bush at the weekend in Mexico and cancel trips to Germany and Portugal.
Putin links Russia's war in Chechnya to the US-led global fight against terrorism which he enthusiastically backed after last year's September 11 attacks in the United States.
The respected Izvestia daily newspaper laid out three stark alternatives for an outcome: protracted negotiations humiliating Russia, massive bloodshed or a combination of the two.
- Reuters
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