Radio station "Ekho Moskvy" : News

2000-12-25 18:06:32

Recently the talks about the possibility of the negotiations with the Chechen representatives began again. Moreover, a group of the deputies to the State Duma headed by Boris Nemtsov went to Ingushetia where they met with the deputies of the Chechen parliament elected under Maskhadov. Khozh-Akhmed Yarikhanov, the personal representative of Aslan Maskhadov, was a member of that delegation. Nevertheless one can't say yet that the federal power gets into contact with Maskhadov. Sergey Yastrzhembsky, the aid to the president, has said that the deputies hadn't the Kremlin's mandate to carry out these negotiations and acted on their own. For all that Yastrzhembsky recognizes the deputies' right for such contacts but he specifies that the objective of these contacts must be to incline the militants to surrender. One of the members of the Duma group that went to Ingushetia, the chairman of the lower chamber committee for the legislation Pavel Krasheninnikov has affirmed that the delegation acted on its own and didn'

t notify the president's administration about anything. At the same time Krasheninnikov is sure that their mission will be useful for the Kremlin. In any case, the head of the delegation Boris Nemtsov is going to meet in the middle of the week with the president and inform him about the results of their visit to Ingushetia. One more member of this delegation - the deputy to the State Duma Sergey Kovalyov has said today in the interview to our radiostation that the negotiations with the Chechens are necessary. But they don't make sense without the participation of international mediators - the parties don't trust each other. Kovalyov also apprehends that the positions of the parties can differ. For all that Kovalyos stresses his impression that the main part of the Chechen resistance is disposed for the negotiations. The plenipotentiary of the head of Chechnya in Moscow Shamil Beno in today's interview to our radio station has spoken in the negative of these negotiations. One more influential figure in Chechn

ya - Beslan Gantamirov, the mayor of Grozny - does't support the idea of negotiations with Maskhadov. According to his words, any negotiations would be a surrender.