Envoy urges West to push Putin into peace talks with Chechnya

CHECHEN envoy Akhmed Zakayev said yesterday he fears there will be further massacres in his homeland if Russian President Vladimir Putin does not hold peace talks with the region’s political parties.

Speaking in the wake of the Beslan school massacre, he called on western governments to urge Mr Putin to begin negotiations.

"Putin's policy has not only not stabilised Chechnya but has brought about a worsening of the situation.

"If [he] continues in the same vein, the Caucasus will radicalise even further and I am gravely concerned that more Beslans will be inevitable.

"Therefore, I call on western governments to reconsider their strategy towards Russia and make peace talks between Russia and the democratically elected government of Chechnya, under the auspices of international mediators, a non-negotiable condition of Russia's continued status as a privileged interlocutor of the west in both trade and political forums."

Mr Zakayev, the representative of Aslan Maskhadov - elected president of Chechnya in the last democratic elections in 1997 condemned the atrocity.

It followed condemnations of Mr Maskhadov and Mr Zakayev by Mr Putin, who said he regretted the fact that the US and Britain had granted asylum to members of the former Chechen government.

Mr Zakayev was granted asylum in Britain in 2003.

He said: "I want to emphasise that the democratically elected Chechen government can only express horror and abhorrence in the face of the terrorist act perpetrated ... in Beslan "President Maskhadov has declared there can be no justification for terrorism and called on the Chechen people to mourn those who died in this tragedy."

"I categorically refute all accusations by the Russian Government that President Maskhadov had any involvement in the Beslan event," said Mr Zakayev.

"Moreover, President Putin's subsequent linking of Aslan Maskhadov, a democratically elected president, to Shamil Basayev, who has accepted responsibility for a number of terrorist attacks in the past, is a deliberate attempt to confuse international public opinion as to the real issues in the Chechen conflict.

"The accusation, as well as the call for a reward for President Maskhadov's head as if he were but a common criminal, is nothing more than deliberate disinformation, part of the propaganda war conducted along the best traditions of the Soviet KGB, with the sole aim of discrediting those in Russian and the rest of the world who insist on dialogue with President Maskhadov."