Putin faces pressure over Chechnya war
European Union leaders and Russian president Vladimir Putin were debating economic, political and trade ties at a Brussels summit today, with human rights groups pressuring the EU to persuade Moscow to ease its crackdown on rebels in Chechnya.
Yesterday Amnesty International said the EU must “bring human rights back to centre-stage in its relations with Russia”.
Human Rights Watch said the need to focus on human rights had increased “given new military operations” in the breakaway Russian province and reports of the arbitrary detention of Chechens following last month’s hostage-taking in a Moscow theatre by Chechen gunmen.
Yesterday Putin promised to let the pro-Moscow Chechen government stage a referendum to approve its constitution, but ruled out talks with the rebels.
The Chechen conflict continues unabated in its fourth year, with Russian artillery and air strikes against rebel positions and rebel hit-and-run attacks which draw Russian troops into skirmishes.
At the summit, Putin will meet Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, European Commission president Romano Prodi and EU foreign and security affairs chief Javier Solana.
EU officials say they expect the two sides to sign an accord ending months of wrangling over travel arrangements between Russia’s Baltic Sea region of Kaliningrad – an enclave which will become surrounded by the EU after Poland and Lithuania join the union in 2004 – and Russia proper.
Under the deal, Poland and Lithuania would issue Russians with a multiple-entry “facilitated travel document” to travel between Kaliningrad and the rest of Russia.
Moscow long considered the visa plan a violation of Russians’ right to travel freely from one part of their country to another. Russians make 960,000 trips by train and 620,000 by car between Kaliningrad and the rest of the country every year.
But EU officials say visas for travel through the union are necessary, citing illegal immigration, especially from Kaliningrad, an economic backwater of 1.5 million people that has significant health, crime and drug problems.
The Soviet Union took Kaliningrad – formerly Koenigsberg and its surrounding territory – from defeated Germany after the Second World War. But the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union separated it from Russia.
The summit will also touch on trade and economic issues that have long escaped agreement.
Officials said the EU would press Putin to open Russia’s insurance market to West European firms, cut airline overflight rights over Siberia and end low energy prices that make Russian exports of manufactured goods very cheap.
In a move intended to warm the summit atmosphere, the EU last week recognised Russia as a free-market economy, allowing it to boost exports to Western Europe and helping Moscow’s bid to join the World Trade Organisation.
