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Moscow not planning retaliation
06/11/2002 10:36 - (SA)
Moscow - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday he would not order any large-scale "anti-terrorist" assaults in Chechnya in the wake of last month's hostage siege in Moscow.
"We must continue anti-terrorist operations in Chechnya as we
are still not free of the terrorists still hiding out there. But
these must have specific targets. There must be no large-scale
operation," Putin told state television.
Putin, whose tough stance towards separatists in Chechnya played
a large part in his election victory in 1999, said such operations were "harmful and therefore unacceptable".
His comments came a week after the bloody climax to the hostage
crisis, in which some 50 Chechen rebels seized 800 people in a
theatre and threatened to kill them if Russia did not end its war
in the breakaway Caucasian republic.
A total of 120 hostages died in the rescue operation launched by
Russian special forces, most of them killed by a gas used to knock out the Chechens.
Russian forces went to war in Chechnya between 1994 and 1996 and
rolled their tanks back into the southern republic in October 1999 to quash a separatist rebellion.
More than 80 000 Russian troops are currently deployed in the region and Chechens claim that 150 000 civilians have been killed in the latest conflict.
On Monday, the Russian army imposed a massive security clampdown
around Chechnya amid fears of fresh attacks, the day after Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said he had ordered a halt to a planned army withdrawal from the republic. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA
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