Thread FULL!!!__AMERICA AT WAR!__Use New Thread!: Russia: Who's a Terrorist?

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Top 1. Feb 5, 2002 11:46 AM

» JenL_2 - Russia: Who's a Terrorist?

This from 2/3 MSNBC.com:

Russia questions U.S. ‘axis’ rhetoric

Defense minister blasts failure to condemn Chechen rebels

Reuters

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov challenged President Bush’s attack on an “axis of evil” states Sunday, warning that disagreement over who was a terrorist could undermine the U.S.-led coalition formed after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

CRITICIZING BUSH’S targeting of Iran, Iraq and North Korea, Ivanov said Moscow had its own list of “rogue states,” including U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, which it accuses of funding separatist rebels in Chechnya it blames for bombings in 1999 in which more than 300 Russians died.

“Not many people in the West like the fact that we have some commercial ties with the countries which you describe as rogue states,” Ivanov said at a conference in Munich, whose audience included U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and other Western ministers.

“Well, we don’t like ... some of your allies, like Saudi Arabia or gulf states who give finance to terrorist organizations.”

Without naming names, Ivanov accused Western allies of “double standards,” criticizing them for failing to condemn Moscow’s Chechen enemies as “terrorists” with the same vigor they have pursued Osama bin Laden.

“What is our greatest concern today is the existence until the present time of double political standards with regard to separatism, religious extremism and fanaticism,” Ivanov said.

“If those who blow up apartment houses in Moscow or Buinaksk in Dagestan are declared freedom fighters while in other countries such persons are referred to as terrorists, one cannot even think of forging a united anti-terrorist front,” he added.

Chechen separatist leaders deny planting the 1999 bombs and have said Russia’s secret services could be responsible. While condemning the Chechen attacks, the United States and European powers have also voiced concerns about Moscow’s war in mainly Muslim Chechnya.

CHECHEN LEADER ‘IN CAVE’

Moscow has repeatedly accused the West in general of failing to support it in its Chechen wars of the 1990s. It protested last month to Washington, London and Paris over diplomatic contacts with the region’s fugitive elected president, Aslan Maskhadov.

Ivanov later compared those contacts to Britain’s welcoming Spain’s Basque separatists or France’s sheltering the Irish Republican Army. He rejected as “rubbish” suggestions that the talks were motivated by a desire in the West for information on Chechnya.

“Maskhadov has not represented anyone for quite some time. He is hiding in a cave now,” Ivanov said at a news conference, echoing remarks by U.S. officials about bin Laden.

Russia regretted that the world community had not agreed a common legal definition of terrorism, Ivanov said, adding that the 1999 blasts should be equated with the attacks on the United States.

He also said Moscow had irrefutable evidence that Chechen fighters had foreign support, notably through links with bin Laden.

Ivanov warned that unnamed militants could try to attack nuclear installations and power plants, seize weapons of mass destruction and try to prompt environmental disaster with actions like blowing up dams.

“Any delay on the part of the world community in taking preventive measures against terror may result in even more horrible consequences,” he said.

“It is easier to prevent a disease than to cure it.”

Russia has a valid point - the U.S. has had a double standard for defining terrorists.....what are we gonna do about it? .....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2