MOSCOW. Dec 14 (Interfax) - Well-known human rights activist and

State Duma Deputy Sergei Kovalyov on Tuesday said that the West must put

pressure on both Russia and the Chechens in order to get the conflict

settled.

He described the current Western position on Chechnya as

hypocritical. "The West must build up pressure on the federal government

and demand that it terminate the military operation in Chechnya," he

said at a meeting commemorating the tenth anniversary of the death of

Academician Andrei Sakharov.

At the same time, the West must also put growing pressure on the

Chechen side and demand that it terminate the bloody kidnapping business

and that those involved in it be punished, he said.

Moreover, guarantees must be provided that "civilized laws will be

used in Chechnya," he said, adding that talks with Chechen President

Aslan Maskhadov should be held in order to settle the conflict.

He admitted that "the position of many members of the Right-Wing

Forces' Union," with which he is affiliated, "is far from perfect" since

"the war in Chechnya is supported by a large segment of the population."

"It is not that the Russian public does not know that human rights are

being violated in Chechnya. The trouble is that it accepts this," he

said.

"Democracy in Russia is in a state of acute crisis," said Kovalyov.

Duma Deputy Valery Borshchev, the chairman of the Human Rights

Chamber of the presidential political consultative center, said that the

state "is ruining the human-rights movement in Russia."

"We are going through a critical period during which the human

rights movement will survive or will be forced to go underground once

again," he said at a roundtable conference on human rights in Russia and

on the tenth anniversary of Sakharov's death.