NATION/WORLD
Thursday, December 8, 1994
9B
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Ousting of leader bungled by Russia
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — Seven soldiers and three coffins came home yesterday from Chechnya, pawns in Russia's clumsy covert war to oust the leader of the rebel republic.
The men from an elite tank division of the army were recruited by the Federal Counterintelligence Service, which has botched perhaps the most ambitious operation of its short life.
Some compare the debacle to the disastrous Bay of Pigs of invasion. It has left soldiers and spies at each others' throats — and hawks and doves alike criticizing President Boris Yeltsin.
It still isn't clear whether Yeltsin knew what his secret agents were up to in the tiny, mostly Muslim republic of 1.2 million on Russia's volatile southern flank.
What is clear is that Russian warplanes bombed Chechnya for several days running last week, and Russian
tank crews working under the intelligence service fought and died in the breakaway republic.
"It all menacingly resembles the gloomiest pages of recent Soviet history: The secret decision by a handful of people that drew a great power into the Afghan war," Ivzestia columnist Otto Latis wrote as the story unraveled.
Political columnist Mikhail Leontyev, writing in the newspaper Segodnya, compared the Chechnya ordeal to the 1961 Bay of Pigs flasco, the unsuccessful attempt by Cuban exiles, backed by the CIA, to topple Fidel Castro in Cuba.
Denials of Moscow's military role in what was portrayed as a conflict between Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev and his internal opposition started to wilt last week with the release of the first Russian prisoners of war.
Dudayev agreed to free the few remaining prisoners only after a personal meeting with Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, who had at first disowned the soldiers. They are due home today.
Grachev publicly promised Dudayev there wouldn't be war. But Russian troops are still poised on Chechnya's borders, and its jets still fly over the capital, Grozny.
The armed forces insists it didn't know the FSK, as the spy agency is known, was recruiting in its ranks. The commander of the soldiers' unit, the elite Kantemirov tank division, has even quit the army in protest.
The genesis of the Chechen operation isn't the only mystery. It isn't even clear how many operations there were. The soldiers were captured fighting alongside Chechnegrebels in a failed attack on Grozny Nov. 26. Grachev's warplanes didn't start bombing until the next week.
Another prominent officer, 14th Army commander Gen. Alexander Lebed, was moved to reveal that he
detained an FSK major trying to recruit a female soldier to spy on him.
Barbs are flying at Yeltsin from all directions; He was too tough. He was too soft. He knew. He was a fool for not knowing.
"Such things could only happen here — and only under this administration!" former Yeltsin press secretary Pavel Voshchenov lamented in Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.
The Chechen operation directly contradicts Yeltsin's stated policy in the Caucasus region, home to a number of felty ethnic groups conquered either by Imperial Russia or the Soviet Union.
"Using force in Chechnaia is out of the question," Yeltsin said in August. "We've been able to avoid ethnic clashes in Russia only because we abstained from force. If we violate this principle in Chechnya, the Caucasus region will rise up. It will mean so much blood and tumult that no one will ever forgive us."
PLO protecting Israel from Islamics
The Associated Press
GAZA CITY, Gaza — PLO chairman Yassir Arafat agreed to protect Israelis from militant Islamic terrorists yesterday and insisted that all Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza respect his authority as the law.
The fresh assurances Arafat gave Secretary of State Warren Christopher at PLO headquarters were designed to hasten elections among the two million Palestinians in the territories and to encourage Israel to begin withdrawing its army from Arab villages.
Militants have killed 94 Israeli civilians and soldiers in the territories and within the country in the 14 months since Israel and the PLO agreed to recognize each other. This has produced anger and anxiety that could bring down Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's government.
Israel's 1993 agreement with the PLO to establish Palestinian self-rule is based on an assurance Arafat would help the army protect the 6,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza and the 120,000 on the West Bank.
The Israeli Cabinet explored
removing some of the settlements but made no final decision yesterday. Rabin has already said those that do not enhance Israel's security, particularly Jerusalem's, should be dismantled.
On his arrival Tuesday night in Israel, Christopher publicly exhorted Arafat to make good on his pledge. After they met for an hour Arafat followed through. "We are putting into consideration the needs of security for the Israelis, and we are ready to discuss it in detail with them," he said.
Christopher said Arafat had told him he understood there could be no peace without security for Israelis. Christopher called Arafat's public statement very significant.
Today Arafat is due to discuss with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres arrangements for redeploying the Israeli army and for holding a Palestinian election. He will see Rabin and Peres on Saturday in Oslo, Norway, where the three will be honored with the Nobel Peace Prize.
A senior Israel official cautioned Tuesday night that there was no reason to be in a hurry about going ahead
with extending Palestinian self-rule throughout the West Bank in light of recurrent violence.
Christopher traveled to Gaza City from Jerusalem in a motorcade. When the bulletproof limousines and vans reached the outskirts of Gaza he switched to a more heavily armored car.
American security agents boarded all vehicles for the bumpy ride along dusty roads and past uniformed and plain-cloated Palestinian police and soldiers who lined the route to Arafat's headquarters alongside the Mediterranean.
A senior U.S. official said Arafat thanked Christopher for his and senior adviser Dennis Ross' assistance in persuading donor nations last month in Brussels, Belgium, to pledge an additional $105 million toward paying for Palestinian police and to run schools, collect taxes and handle other day-to-day activities on the West Bank and in Gaza.
Also, the donors pledged $18.5 million for public-works projects designed by the United Nations.
UN prepares withdraw of peacekeepers
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina
The Associated Press
SAKAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — The United Nations, its peacekeeping mission nearly paralyzed, prepared yesterday to withdraw hundreds of stranded peacekeepers from northwestern Bosnia after failing to halt a Serb assault on the area.
A group of Bangladeshi peacekeepers tried to leave a besieged town yesterday but were turned back by Serb forces, U.N. officials. It was not immediately clear if the attempt was part of the planned pullout and whether the Serbs' action foreshadowed trouble for other pullouts.
The U.N.'s deteriorating situation has intensified calls for a complete withdrawal of peacekeepers from Bosnia. NATO nations yesterday ordered their military experts to speed up planning for a withdrawal.
Extra ground troops would be needed to cover the withdrawal, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said yesterday. Sending more troops raises the possibility of further entanglement in the morass.
The decision to withdraw about 400 of the 1,200 Bangladeshi peacekeepers in the Bihac region — the northwestern pocket where some of the most severe fighting is raging — was the most tangible evidence of the U.N.'s inability to protect and supply its own forces, much less civilians who are running out of food.
The 24,000-member U.N. force in Bosnia is mandated to provide protection and escort to humanitarian aid convoys. Early on, it decided to do that without using force, thus giving Serbs virtual veto over U.N. operations in the 70 percent of Bosnia they control.
A U.N. aid convoy reached the people of the eastern enclave of Gorazde on yesterday, and the Serbs gave clearance for an aid convoy to the Bihac region today. They also allowed a Jordanian officer with a heart condition to leave the town of Banja Luka, after delaying a day.
But the few concessions did not appear to signal a break in the Serbs'
new aggressiveness towards the United Nations. They continued to hold 356 peacekeepers hostage and have virtually shut down all U.N. movement pending assurances from the United Nations that there will be no more NATO air strikes.
A British foot patrol in Goracea, south of Sarajevo, came under Serb fire for the second day in a row yesterday, said Lt. Col. Jan-Dirk von Merveld, a U.N. official in Sarajevo.
A U.N. observation post near the northeastern government town of Tuzla was destroyed by Serb fire on Tuesday, without injuries. Near Mostar, in southwestern Bosnia, two Spanish peacekeepers were wounded yesterday in shelling of unknown origin.
The Bihac battlefront appeared stable, with no changes in the front lines, von Merveldt said.
But the United Nations said it would withdraw about 400 Bangladeshi peacekeepers from the area.
Rebels in Mexico protest election of governor-elect
The Associated Press
TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico — Under a threat by rebels to reignite their uprising in Mexico's poorest state, about 2,000 Indian protesters yesterday demanded the governor-elect of Chiapas not take office.
Eduardo Robledo Rincon,
declared governor despite opposition charges of vote fraud, is to be inaugurated today.
Robledo, of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, has offered to step down, but only if the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army laid its arms and signed a peace accord.
There was no immediate response from the rebels. They have said they wouldn't lay down arms until the government made sweeping democratic reforms and improved living conditions for poor Indians.
The showdown gives Zedillo his first major crisis just a week after he was sworn in himself. Yesterday, Zedillo pleaded with the Zapatista to reconsider their rejection of new peace talks with the government.
The Zapatistas launched their uprising Jan. 1. More than 145 people were killed in 12 days of fighting before a cease-fire took effect 11 days later.
The cease-fire has held, but rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos told reporters in the Lacandon Jungle on Tuesday that the period of peaceful civil resistance in Chiapas would end the moment that Eduardo Robledo took possession.
Official returns show Robledo won 51 percent to 24 percent for leftist candidate Amado Avandano Figueroa, a lawyer and newspaper publisher from the Democratic Revolutionary Party. Avendano's backers and many independent observers said votes were bought and ballot boxes stuffed in the Aug. 21 vote.
Opposition groups have threatened protests to block Robledo's inauguration.
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