- Washington DC, September 14 -- In the wake of the terrorist
atrocity at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, in the Russian Federation,
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made remarks to the western press
which expose the key role of the US and British governments in backing
Chechen terrorism. Whatever Putin's previous role in events regarding Chechnya,
his current political posture is one which sharply undercuts the legitimacy
of the supposed Anglo-American "war on terror," and which points
up the hypocrisy of the Bush regime's pledge that it will make no distinction
between the terrorists and those who harbor them -- since Washington and
London are currently harboring Chechens implicated in terrorism. All in
all, Putin's response to Chechen events has, with the third anniversary
of 9/11, brought the collapse of the official 9/11 myth measurably closer.
The hypocritical terror demagogy of Bush and Blair has now been undercut
by the head of state of another permanent member of the UN Security Council...
On Monday September 6, Putin spoke for three and one half hours with a
group of some 30 western correspondents and Russia experts at his dacha
near Novo Ogarevo outside Moscow. There is no official transcript so far,
but accounts have been published in The Guardian, The Independent, and
Le Monde. The Washington Post waited until Friday, September 10 to publish
an article, but left out the most significant remarks. There are now signs
that the Anglo-American press is beginning a new campaign against Putin
as a dictator, stressing the obvious in order to silence his attacks on
the US-UK sponsorship of Chechen terror.
Putin, a KGB veteran who knows whereof he speaks, told the gathering that
the school massacre showed that "certain western circles would like
to weaken Russia, just as the Romans wanted to destroy Carthage."
He thus suggested that the US and UK, not content with having bested Russia
in the Cold War, now wanted to proceed to the dismemberment and total destruction
of Russia a Carthaginian peace like the one the Romans finally imposed
at the end of the Punic Wars in 146 BC, when they poured salt into the
land of Carthage so nothing would every grow there again. (Le Monde, September
8, 2004)
"There is no link between Russian policy in Chechnya and the hostage-taking
in Beslan," said Putin, meaning that the terrorists were using the
Chechen situation as a pretext to attack Russia. According to a paraphrase
in Le Monde: "The aim of that international terrorism, supported more
or less openly by foreign states, whose names the Russian president didn't
want to name, is to weaken Russia from the inside, by criminalizing its
economy, by provoking its disintegration through propagating separatism
in the Caucasus and the transformation of the region into a staging ground
for actions directed against the Russian Federation."
"Mr. Putin," continues Le Monde, "reiterated the accusation
he had launched in a veiled form against western countries which appear
to use double-talk. On the one side, their leaders assure the Russian President
of their solidarity in the fight against terrorism. On the other hand,
the intelligence services and the military 'who have not abandoned
their Cold War prejudices,' in Putin's words -- entertain contacts with
those the international press calls the 'rebels.' 'Why are those who emulate
Bin Laden called terrorists and the people who kill children, rebels? Where
is the logic?' asked Vladimir Putin, and then gave the answer: 'Because
certain political circles in the West want to weaken Russia just like the
Romans wanted to destroy Carthage.' 'But, continued Putin, "we will
not allow this scenario to come to pass.'"
Le Monde continues: "This is, according to [Putin] a bad calculation,
because Russia is a factor of stability. By weakening it, the Cold War
nostalgics are clearly acting against the interests of their own country."
In Putin's words: "We are the sincere champions of this cooperation
[against terrorism], we are open and loyal partners. But if foreign services
have contacts with the 'rebels,' they cannot be treated as reliable allies,
as Russia is for them." (Le Monde, September 8, 2004)
In Guardian correspondent Jonathan Steele's account of the meeting with
Putin, this is the Russian President's response to the US and UK on the
question of negotiating with the Chechen guerrillas of Aslan Maskhadov:
"Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to
the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it
to him so he leaves you in peace? You find it possible to set some limitations
in your dealings with these bastards, so why should we talk to people who
are child-killers?" (London Guardian, September 7, 2004)
As Michel Chossudovsky pointed out some years back, the Chechen leaders
Basayev and Al Khattab were trained in the CIA-run camps for Islamic fighters
in Afghanistan. In 1999, Putin rode to power on a backlash against Chechen
terror which he had in all probability staged himself thus judoing
a long-standing US-UK capability. The key point is that the Russian press
is now openly denouncing London and Washington as centers for terrorist
control. This can blow the lid off the 9-11 hoax.
On Saturday, September 4, Putin had delivered a national television address
to the Russian people on the Beslan tragedy, which had left more than 300
dead, over half of them children. The main thrust was that terrorism constitutes
international proxy warfare against Russia. Among other things Putin said:
"In general, we need to admit that we did not fully understand the
complexity and the dangers of the processes at work in our own country
and in the world. In any case, we proved unable to react adequately. We
showed ourselves to be weak, and the weak get beaten."
"Some people would like to tear from us a tasty morsel. Others are
helping them. They are helping, reasoning that Russia still remains one
of the world's major nuclear powers, and as such still represents a threat
to them. And so they reason that this threat should be removed. Terrorism,
of course, is just an instrument to achieve these gains."
"What we are dealing with, are not isolated acts intended to frighten
us, not isolated terrorist attacks. What we are facing is direct intervention
of international terror directed against Russia. This is a total, cruel
and full-scale war that again and again is taking the lives of our fellow
citizens." (Kremlin.ru, September 6, 2004)
Around the time of 9/11, Putin had pointed to open recruitment of Chechen
terrorists going on in London, telling a German interviewer: "In London,
there is a recruitment station for people wanting to join combat in Chechnya.
Today -- not officially, but effectively in the open -- they are talking
there about recruiting volunteers to go to Afghanistan." (Focus --
German weekly newsmagazine, September 2001) In addition, it is generally
known in well-informed European circles that the leaders of the Chechen
rebels were trained by the CIA, and that the Chechens were backed by US-sponsored
anti-Russian fighters from Afghanistan. In recent months, US-UK backed
Chechens have destroyed two Russian airliners and attacked a Moscow subway
station, in addition to the school atrocity.
Some aspects of Putin's thinking were further explained by a press interview
given by Aslambek Aslakhanov, the Chechen politician who is one of Putin's
official advisors. A dispatch from RIA Novosti reported Aslakhanov's comments
as follows: "The terrorists who seized the school in Beslan, North
Ossetia, took their orders from abroad. 'They were talking with people
not from Russia, but from abroad. They were being directed,' said Aslambek
Aslakhanov, advisor to the President of the Russian Federation. 'It is
the desire of our "friends" in quotation marks -- who have
probably for more than a decade been carrying out enormous, titanic work,
aimed at dismembering Russia. These people have worked very hard, and the
fact that the financing comes from there and that they are the puppet masters,
is also clear." Aslakhanov, who was named by the terrorists as one
of the people they were going to hold talks with, also told RIA Novosti
that the bid for such "talks" was completely phony. He said that
the hostage-takers were not Chechens. When he talked to them, by phone,
in Chechen, they demanded that he talk Russian, and the ones he spoke with
had the accents of other North Caucasus ethnic groups. (RIA Novosti, September
6, 2004)
On September 7, RIA Novosti reported on the demand of the Russian Foreign
Ministry that two leading Chechen figures be extradited from London and
Washington to stand trial in Russia. A statement from the Russia Foreign
Ministry's Department of Information and Press indicated that Russia will
put the United States and Britain on the spot about extraditing two top
Chechen separatist officials, who have been given asylum in Washington
and London, respectively. They are Akhmad Zakayev, known as a "special
representative" of Aslan Maskhadov (currently enjoying asylum in London),
and Ilyas Akhmadov, the "Foreign Minister" of the unrecognized
"Chechen Republic-Ichkeria" (now residing in the USA). (RIA Novosti,
September 7, 2004)
"SCHOOL SEIZURE WAS PLANNED IN WASHINGTON AND LONDON"
This was the headline of an even more explicit unsigned commentary by the
Russian news agency KMNews.ru. This analysis blames the Beslan school massacre
squarely on the U.S. and British intelligence agencies. The point of departure
here is that Shamil Basayev, the brutal Chechen field commander, has been
linked to the attack (something that Putin advisor Aslambek Aslakhanov
yesterday said was known to the Russian FSB, successor of the KGB). The
article highlights the recent rapprochement of London and Washington with
key representatives of Aslan Maskhadov: Britain's giving asylum to Akhmad
Zakayev (December 2003) and the USA welcoming Ilyas Akhmadov (August 2004).
KMNews: CHECHEN TERROR BOSS ON US STATE DEPARTMENT PAYROLL
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- KMNews writes: "In early August, ... 'Minister of
Foreign Affairs of the Chechen Republic-Ichkeria' Ilyas Akhmadov received
political asylum in the USA. And for his 'outstanding services,' Akhmadov
received a Reagan-Fascell grant," including a monthly stipend, medical
insurance, and a well-equipped office with all necessary support services,
including the possibility of meetings with political circles and leading
U.S. media...."What about our partners in the 'anti-terrorist coalition,'
who provided asylum, offices and money to Maskhadov's representatives?"
asks the Russian press agency. Citing the official expressions of sympathy
and offers of help from President Bush, National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice, and State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, KMNews warns: "But
let's not shed tears of gratitude just yet. First we should ask: were 'Special
Representative of the President of CRI' Zakayev or 'Minister of Foreign
Affairs of the CRI' Akhmadov, located in Great Britain and the USA, aware
of the terrorist acts that were in preparation? Beyond a doubt. And let's
also find out, how Akhmadov is spending the money provided by the Reagan-Fascell
Foundation. We note: this Foundation is financed by the U.S. Congress through
the budget of the State Department! "Thus, the conclusion is obvious.
Willingly or not, Downing Street and the White House provoked the guerrillas
to these latest attacks. Willingly or not, Great Britain and the USA have
nurtured the separatists with material, information and diplomatic resources.
Willingly or not, the policy of London and Washington fostered the current
terrorist acts." "As the ancients said, cui bono? Perhaps we
are too hasty with such sweeping accusations against our 'friends' and
'partners'? Is there a motive for the Anglo-American 'anti-terrorist coalition'
to fan the fires of terror in the North Caucasus?" "Alas, there
is a motive. It is no secret, that the West is vitally interested in maintaining
instability in the Caucasus. That makes it easier to pump out the fossil
fuels, extracted in the Caspian region, and it makes it easier to control
Georgia and Azerbaijan, and to exert influence on Armenia. Finally, it
makes it easier to drive Russia out of the Caspian and the Caucasus. Divide
et impera! - the leaders of the Roman Empire already introduced this simple
formula for subjugation."
KMNews: TERROR SUPPORTERS "ON THE BANKS OF THE THAMES AND THE POTOMAC"
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- KMNews continues: "Alas, it must be recognized that
the co-authors of the current tragic events are to be found not in the
Arab countries of the Middle East, but on the banks of the Thames and the
Potomac. Will the leadership of Russia be able to make decisions, in this
situation?" "Yes - if there is the political will. The first
thing is that black must be called black, and white, white. It is time
to admit that no "antiterrorist coalition" exists, that the West
is pursuing its egotistical interests (spreading its political influence,
seizing fossil fuels deposits, etc.). Our own coalition needs to be formed,
with nations that are genuinely interested in eliminating terror in the
North Caucasus. Finally, it is time to change the entire tactics and strategy
of counterterrorism measures. It is obvious that catching female suicide
bombers on the streets of Moscow or carrying out operations to free children
who are taken hostage, are, so to speak, the 'last line of defense.' It
is time to learn to make preemptive strikes against the enemy, and it's
time to carry combat onto the territory of the enemy. Otherwise, we shall
be defeated." (Source: KMNews.ru, September 7, 2004)
Izvestia stresses the probable ethnic composition of the terrorist death
squad, and its likely role in exacerbating tensions in the ethnic labyrinth
of the Caucasus. Izvestia finds the targeting of North Ossetia in the Beslan
incident "not accidental," pointing to the danger of "irreversible
consequences" for interethnic relations between Ossetians, Ingushis
and Chechens. "Russia is now facing multi-vectored threats along the
entire Caucasus," the paper writes. (Izvestia, September 3, 2004)
In the wake of Putin's speech, prominent Russian commentators discussed
the recent terror campaign against Russia in terms of a possible "casus
belli" for a new East-West conflict. Several commentaries have reaffirmed
Putin's key statement, that international terrorism has no independent
existence, but functions only as "an instrument," wielded by
powerful international circles committed (in part) to the early destruction
of Russia as a nuclear-armed power.
A commentary in the widely read Russian business news service RosBusinessConsult
(RBC) was entitled "The West is unleashing Jihads against Russia."
In language seldom heard since the end of the Cold War, RBC charges that
the recent wave of terror attacks against Russia, beginning with the sabotage
of two airplanes and a terror bombing at a Moscow subway station, and culminating
so far in the Beslan attack, was immediately preceded by what RBC calls
"an ultimatum from the West," for Russia to turn over the Caucasus
region to "Anglo-Saxon control."
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- ANGLO-SAXON TERROR ULTIMATUM TO RUSSIA FROM THE LONDON
ECONOMIST
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- "Some days prior to the onset of the series of acts
of terrorism in Russia, which has cost hundreds of lives, a number of extremely
influential Western mass-media, expressing establishment positions, issued
a personal warning to Vladimir Putin, that Russia should get out of the
Caucasus, or else his political career would come to an end. Therefore,
when the President on Saturday spoke of a declaration of war having been
made against Russia, this was not just a matter of so-called 'international
terrorism'... One week prior to the first acts of terrorism, the authoritative
British magazine, the Economist, which expresses the positions of Great
Britain's establishment, formulated the Western position concerning the
Caucasus, and above all the policy of the Anglo-Saxon elite, in a very
precise manner," RBC writes.
CZECH NGO BLOWS UP RUSSIAN TANK; BRITISH EXPERTS TRAIN CHECHEN GANGS
The RBC commentary goes on to cite the Economist of August 19, which contained
what RBC characterizes as a virtual ultimatum to Russia. RBC notes that
"the carrying out of such a series of coordinated, highly professional
terrorist attacks, would be impossible without the help of qualified 'specialists'."
RBC notes that at the end of August one such "specialist," working
for an NGO based in the Czech republic, was arrested for blowing up a Russian
armed personnel carrier. Also, British "experts" have been found
instructing Chechen gangs in how to lay mines. "It cannot be excluded,
that also in Beslan, the logistics of the operation were provided by just
such 'specialists'," notes RBC.
The RBC editorial concludes: "Apparently, by having recourse to large-scale
terrorist actions, the forces behind that terrorism, have now acted directly
to force a 'change' in the political situation in the Caucasus, propagating
interethnic wars into Russia. "The only way to resist this, would
be for Moscow to make it known, that we are ready to fight a new war, according
to new rules and new methods -- not with mythical 'international terrorists',
who do not and never existed, but with the controllers of the 'insurgents
and freedom fighters'; a war against the geopolitical puppet-masters, who
are ready to destroy thousands of Russians for the sake of achieving their
new division of the world." (RBC, September 7, 2004)
In a related comment, the Chairman of the Duma Foreign Affairs Committee,
Dmitri Rogozin, declared in an interview on Sunday September 5: "I
think [those behind the terrorism] are those who would like to see Russia
totally discredited as a power.... I think that the aim is to destabilize
the political situation in the country and plunge Russia into total chaos."
(Ekho Moskvy, September 6, 2004)
Western press organs have responded to the school massacre with a campaign
to blame, not the terrorists, but the Putin regime and Russian society.
This disingenuous policy has further stoked Russian resentment. On September
6, Strana.ru headlined, "Western Press: The Tragedy Is Russia's Own
Fault," commenting that "unlike official politicians, journalists
do not want to admit that the bombings and hostage-takings in our country
are acts of international terrorism." Another example of this Putin-bashing
was the article by Masha Lippman in the Washington Post of September 9.
A basic reason for the US-UK surrogate warfare against Russia is the great
Anglo-Saxon fear of a continental bloc of the type which emerged during
the run up to Bush's Iraq aggression. The centerpiece of the continental
bloc is the German-Russian relationship. Washington and London fear that
Russia will soon agree to accept euros in payment for its oil deliveries.
This would not just prevent the Anglo-Americans from further skimming off
oil transactions between Russia and Europe. It would represent the beginning
of the end of the dollar as the reserve currency of the world, a role which
the battered greenback, weakened by Bush's $500 billion yearly trade deficit
and Bush's $750 billion budget deficit, can no longer fulfill. If Russia
moves to the euro, it is expected that the Eurasian giant may be quickly
followed by Iran, Indonesia, Venezuela, and other countries. This could
put an end to the ability of the US to run astronomical foreign trade deficits,
and would place the question of a US return to a production-based economy
on the agenda. The oil-euro question is expected to be discussed at the
upcoming Russian-German economic summit.
- RUSSIA TO PAY FOR OIL WITH EUROS?
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- In a half-page article published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung and headlined "Realizing the Strategic Partnership,"
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov predicted key progress in the energy
sector. Lavrov said that numerous proposals by Moscow on how to expand
cooperation in the sphere of future-shaping high-tech branches of the economy
will be put on the agenda of the September 11-12 German-Russian economic
summit in Hamburg. Russia calls for the development of "mutually beneficial
cooperation in aerospace, information technology, telecom, biotechnology,
development of new materials, laser technology, and nanotechnology. Lavrov
wrote that Russia expects a breakthrough at the Hamburg talks -- which
will also deal with the energy sector. (Frankfurter Allgemeine, September
3, 2004)
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