GROZNY, Russia, Sept 29 (AFP)
Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov defiantly enlisted feared Islamic warlords into his army on Wednesday even as Russia called on the rebel republic to renounce �terrorism� or face more punishing attacks.
With warplanes pounding Chechnya from the air in attacks which Maskhadov�s office said killed 19 more people, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called on Maskhadov �to announce that he is willing to free his territory of international terrorists.
�I have never said that we will never stage a ground operation (in Chechnya),� Putin later added. �We have options.�
Putin expected Maskhadov to disassociate himself from Islamic guerrillas in emergency talks with Makhomed Makhomedov, the president of the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan which witnessed two bloody incursions from Chechen-based Islamic rebels last month.
That meeting however was later cancelled when Dagestanis, still furious with the Chechen invasion, blocked off roads leading to the agreed meeting point and refused to let Maskhadov through.
�They attacked us from Chechnya, and we don�t care if it was Maskhadov or Basayev. They are all one team, and we are against negotiations,� one irate Dagestani man told ORT television.
Maskhadov had previously dissociated himself from the Dagestani invasions. These were orchestrated by Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, a skilled field commander who tops Moscow�s most wanted list.
Basayev is considered a terrorist by Moscow for his role in organizing a series of raids on Russia during the Chechen war and also leading the Dagestani assaults which killed 282 Russian soldiers.
Moscow further accuses Basayev of masterminding a wave of terrorist bomb attacks on residential blocks in Russia which have left 292 people dead since September 4.
Basayev quit Maskhadov�s government last year after serving briefly as prime minister and has since slipped out from under Grozny�s control.
But Chechen officials told AFP that Maskhadov met with Basayev and his fellow rebel field commanders and on Wednesday gave them �formal instructions� on how to defend Chechnya in case Russian troops invaded.
Maskhadov has only minimal control over Chechnya�s armed forces. Most gunmen in the separatist republic are loyal to a range of field commanders who control their own patches of Chechnya.
As press reports in Moscow of an imminent Russian ground invasion of Chechnya stack up, the Chechen president apparently has found himself with little alternative but to turn to the field commanders for help.
In Moscow, the Sevodnya daily reported that Russia�s army had presented President Boris Yeltsin with an invasion plan of Chechnya in which most of the breakaway republic would be brought back under Moscow�s control by November. The ground assault would be launched from the neighboring Russian republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan, it said.
The army, which under the invasion plan would progress towards the capital Grozny by about 10 kilometers (six miles) per day, would reportedly be supported by helicopter gunships.
Sevodnya made no mention of when such a ground invasion would be launched or how Yeltsin reacted to the proposal, reportedly made to him on Tuesday by Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev.
Separately, the Interfax news agency cited defense sources as saying that preparations for a troop invasion were �practically complete.�
Meanwhile Russian forces continued to pound Chechnya from the air on Wednesday, although Grozny was spared for the first time in six days.
Maskhadov�s office told AFP that 562 civilians have been killed since Russia launched its attacks on September 5.
Those attacks have prompted a flood of refugees from Chechnya into the neighboring regions of Russia.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said it was holding talks with Moscow on helping some 50,000 Chechen refugees who have fled the intensifying air strikes.
In its first comments on Moscow�s campaign in Chechnya on Tuesday, the United States expressed concern and urged the sides not to target civilians or use disproportionate force.
By Alessandro RAIMONDI (THE GLOBE)
It�s remarkable how little coverage has been given by Asian media to the tragedy of East Timor during the last month. This newspaper too has not distinguish itself for the account of events taking place in the 5,846 square miles of the eastern part of Timor island, from the moment the UN organized ballot over an autonomy form of the half island, granted by Indonesia, took place on August 30th last.
There might be various reasons to convey a credible explanation, but the most sounding of all seems to be laying, in Europe�s judgement, on the overwhelming Roman Catholic faith deeply rooted in that former Portuguese colony, that happens to be settled in a predominantly Muslim area of the world.
Become ruled by those Europeans 250 years ago � when after the battle of Penfui in 1749 it was steadily taken away from Dutch goals � the island, whose western half remained under Holland�s control as part of the Dutch East Indies, has been illegally handed over by the Netherlands to Indonesia when the latter came into existence in 1949, fifty years ago, after a bloody conflict ending up in the Dutch granting independence to their former colony.
This is where the trouble began, in fact not only Holland ceded what it was not hers, but Indonesia � that�s folly � accepted what she couldn�t possibly get and that phisically was not given. The Portuguese remained firmly in their half island until 1974 when the so-called �flowers revolution� spread up in Lisboa. True that having shamefully left East Timor to Indonesian appetite, Portugal, at that time a rather poorly rated interlocutor, declared that her colonial rule over that half island would have lasted until 1978, but effectively there was left no Portuguese shadow of order there. So much so that Suharto�s Indonesia occupied that territory in December 1975, annexing it on July 17th, �76, as her 27th province, when still nominally a Portuguese colony!
To add confusion and hindrance to the West, in spite of the fact that the UN never recognized the Indonesian take over of the former colony, Australia reckoned Indonesia�s sovereignty over the battered region.
From that moment on nobody has taken care of the Catholic population: Portuguese vanished, Dutch and Australian being mainly Protestants, and almost totally Muslims all Indonesians, for the 800,000 populace of East Timor has started a via dolorosa that has not ended yet!
In 23 years of brutal rule, to call it plainly, the Indonesian military has cracked down heavily on the just independence quest of East Timorese, having very little to share, religiously and historically, with the former Dutch colonized and Muslim Indonesians of the other half of the island. In almost a quarter of a century the Catholic population on the eastern part of the island has lost to famine, violence and armed resistance 200,000 people, a silent holocaust that the world hasn�t wanted to know about, regretfully turning its back to the ever mounting disaster.
Finally, as times change, the world � the West, frankly speaking � has turned attention to that tiny wrecked part of Asia as Dr. Lamberto Dini, Italy�s Foreign minister, has boldly put it: �The international community now takes military action to deal with tragedies that only a few years ago would have left us indifferent�. So much so that Australia�s astonishingly false step of 21 years ago has been �repealed� by her new stand as a large supplier of troops for the UN peacekeeping force ought to reach the island, and remain there in the interim up to the country�s independence. A late repent, but at least a repent.
Italy, of course, has already dispatched some of her soldiers to northern Australia, where the UN force is being assembled to be sent to East Timor.
Europe will be doing her part, specially for what concerns the unrelenting pressure she activates on the Indonesian government not to change Mr. Habibie�s decision of late January. The president has, in a mostly welcomed pacification gesture, offered East Timorese independence if his autonomy offer might have been rejected. In August 30th that proposal was put on a ballot, almost all eligible East Timorese participated at great risk, being already the Catholic population intimidated by the violent hordes of armed militiamen, the infamous �disguise� assumed by TNI, the Indonesian army, to stop a flow to the polls that has proven devastating for its previous commanding position.
A sounding 78.5% has made clear that East Timor is not going to be content with anything short of independence. A mere autonomy is not enough after 23 years of suffering, abuse, and a toll that by reducing her population of one fifth has dug a bottomless gap, to forget. Not now.
Clearly beaten the democratic way, anti-separatists have made the worst happen, gaining for themselves the dubious fame of �delinquents at bay�. What Indonesia has to prove now it�s her honourableness, not by futile talkings but by effective measures: pulling out their armed forces, crack down on those irregular militias and proceed speedily with Mr. Habibie�s overture by the endorsement of her new Parliament and the new president.
Should that not likely happen, then the International Court of The Hague must rule the Dutch-Indonesian act of 1949 as illegal and void, leaving Jakarta with no ground to claim over East Timor.
State delinquency is no longer admitted, Europeans think, the next millennium needs to be the one ending institutionalized abuse of power the world over, in Indonesia, in China, in Africa, and everywhere a single voice is being silenced not to be heard its dissent.
This is the course Europeans are prepared to take, after all when people lead, leaders follow�
ALMATY, Sept 30 (THE GLOBE)
From September 23 to October 2 the event devoted to the 100th anniversary of the day of birth of the Great Imam Khomeine, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran is being held in Iran, the press-attach� of the Iranian Embassy to the Republic of Kazakhstan Mehran Mouvahedfar said to THE GLOBE.
Sied Rohoullah Musavi Khomeine is the leader and the founder of the Islamic revolution of February 11, 1977.
In 20 years after the victory of the Islamic revolution, Iran is one of the most free state in the world having one of the most democratic governments. Experts evaluate the victory of the Islamic revolution as a strategic defeat of the entire foreign activity of USA, after the defeat in Vietnam.
Vitaly MAKARCHEV, Sept 29
(�ITAR-TASS�)
Following the abrupt demand for gold in the London precious metals market, platinum prices began to grow fast. Today at the opening of the auction US$ 401 was paid per 1 tr. ounce of platinum (i.e. US$ 19 more than on Tuesday). The growth dynamics of platinum prices is so rapid that brokers predict it to bound over US$ 400.
In general, the growth of prices of precious metals positively influences the financial positions of Russia, the leading producer of platinum and a range of rare metals.
Meanwhile, today gold prices are still kept at the level highest for the last two years. When today the London gold market was opened, prices again raised, this time up to US$ 311 per 1 tr. ounce. However, specialists believe that by the morning official London fixing the price will be within US$ 305 to 308 per 1 tr. ounce. In experts� opinion, the growth of gold prices �is of long-term basis.�
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