07-26-2004, 06:34 PM
Maskhadov: “Russian-Chechen War will outlive Putin.”
23.07.2004
“The Chechen people are waging a war against international terrorism, headed by the Russian leadership”
Maskhadov: “Russian-Chechen War will outlive Putin.”
“The Chechen people are waging a war against international terrorism, headed by the Russian leadership”
President of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Aslan Maskhadov told the journalists in an e-mail exchange with Reuters that Chechens have the right to be carrying out operations on the Russian soil and that the conflict will most likely to be expanding. President Maskhadov was skeptical about negotiations and predicted that the war would outlast Putin.
«Negotiations for Chechens are not an end in themselves», he stated, - «We look at them as one of the paths to ending the fighting. As sad as it sounds, I think the current Russian-Chechen war will outlive Putin», Maskhadov wrote.
He dismissed a Russian plan to hold an election for a new Chechen leader on August 29 as a 'farce' that would only make a peaceful solution more difficult to achieve.
«Any political figure named by the occupiers ... will be branded a quisling», President Maskhadov wrote, -«Quislings have one fate, which no normal person would choose».
Maskhadov denied being behind a large-scale attack last month in Ingushetia. But he said he would not be surprised if there were similar operations in other parts of Russia.
«As for Chechens carrying fighting into Russian territory, my opinion is: this would be absolutely legitimate -- in any case, no less legitimate than the allies in World War II carrying fighting into the territory of Hitler's Germany,” he stressed. «If Chechens possessed warplanes or rockets, then air strikes on Russian cities would also be legitimate», he wrote.
President Maskhadov complained that the Western leaders, who would urge Putin to enter negotiations, which he was counting on, had become «hostages to their own fear», accepting too quickly Russia's arguments that Chechens were linked to terrorism. «I have said and continue to say: the Chechen people are waging a war against international terrorism, headed by the Russian leadership», he said.
«All independent media, all humanitarian organizations know and declare that what is happening in Chechnya is the deliberate murder of a civilian population on ethnic grounds. Yet leaders of the top Western countries are unconscionably repeating the Kremlin's lie about thousands of Chechens in Afghanistan or Iraq, supposedly fiercely opposing coalition forces».
«I don't know, maybe some of these al-Qaeda people came to Chechnya, although I can't imagine what they were looking for here. We are fighting for our freedom and have no aim of global domination. The United States is not our enemy or competitor».
Source: http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/article.php?id=3005