Terrorism in Russia: The Beslan Tragedy and Putin's Response

September 21, 2004

Unedited transcript prepared from a tape recording

Noon	Registration
12:15 p.m.	Panelists:	Leon Aron, AEI
		Nikolas Gvosdev, Nixon Center
		Fiona Hill, Brookings Institution
		Radek Sikorski, NAI
		Vladimir Socor, Jamestown Foundation
2:00	Adjournment

Proceedings:
MR. ARON:  --extremely well represented panel.  So I would not want to waste any time.  On behalf of my colleague, Director of New Atlantic Initiative, Radek Sikorski and myself, I would like to welcome you to the American Enterprise Institute.  This is a panel that will try to make sense out of things that are, that are difficult to make sense of sometimes.  And they are, on the one hand, the horrific crime that occurred in Beslan on September 1st of this year on the one hand, and on the other the emerging contours of Russian political military and social response to that terrorist act.

We will begin with Nikolas Gvosdev, who recently returned from Russia and who was, in fact, in that exclusive group of western academics, journalists, and experts who met with President Putin on the 6th of September, I believe, in his Nova Garovia [ph.] country residence and sort of observed firsthand the immediate, perhaps even gut reaction of the Moscow elite and leadership to the Beslan massacre.  I would also ask, and Nikolas very kindly agreed to, sort of put the, both Beslan and the Chechnya war in a wider historical context.  That's his, called his specialty, Russia's presence in the North Caucasus.  And then sort of walk us over to the present day and to what he saw and heard in Nova Garovia.

I will then go to Radek Sikorski who, as always, will provide us with the European reaction, both West European and East European, I hope, reaction again to this dual dynamic on the one hand, the Beslan massacre which in effect occurred on the borders of Europe and was, in many respects, a very troubling signal to Europe.  And then, the--Russia's political response, particularly as exemplified by President Putin's speech on September 13th, again, what Eastern and Western Europe are thinking about it and whether that dynamic is going to have an impact on European policy both towards terrorism and towards Russia.

I will then turn to Vladimir Socor to whom we are eternally grateful for coming all the way from Germany to be on this panel.  He was in the North Caucasus recently.  Huh?

MR. SOCOR:  South.

MR. ARON:  South Caucasus.  In any case, he was in the area.

[Laughter.]

MR. ARON:  And this is one of those rare occasions where you hear from a trained scholar and analyst specialist rather than a journalist about what is happening on the ground.  And I think he will add a few layers of complexity to the situation as he discusses social, political, military, and economic details of what's happening in the area around Beslan.

Finally, Fiona Hill, who literally arrived from Moscow two days ago, will talk pretty much will sort of follow up on all other presentations, I would imagine, particularly hewing closer to Nick's presentation because she, too, was in that group that met with Putin on September 6th.  But as she is a more recent arrival from Russia, she will be able to update us on what happened since September 6th, but also since Putin's, by now I might say, infamous speech on September 13th.

Now, let me make just a brief introduction.  I will be moderating and pretty much take myself out as a presenter.  But just a few comments to outline the issues before us as I see them.  What we have before us is on the one hand a war.  And I think Putin was absolutely correct when he characterized Beslan as a war on Russia.  There's no doubt about that.  It has been going on for quite a while and Russia simply refused to recognize it because--and I hope we will touch on this--it does not want the internationalization of this war while at the same time it complains about international terrorism that's arraigned against it.

So we have a war, but we also have the beginning of a political response to that war.  Now, to all of you students of Russian history here, this clearly has rather ominous echos.  Because the Russian history in its key instances has been punctuated and shaped by wars.  The Crimean War of 1854/56 led to Alexander, II's reforms, including the abolition of Servo.  The war with Japan, 1904/1905, has resulted in the October Manifesto and the beginning of the constitutional monarchy and the parliamentary republic.  The war, the first World War, World War I, contributed greatly, perhaps decisively, to the Bolshevik victory in October 1917.  Finally, closer to us, Russia's war in Afghanistan, 1979/1988, undoubtedly if you look at the materials of Gliomas, undoubtedly added urgency to Gorbachev's reforms with the results of which we are now all aware.  Finally, Russia's--I don't want to say defeat--say voluntary withdrawal from the cold war in the late 1980s clearly attended if not in fact contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the democratic revolution of August 1991.

So clearly this dynamic of a major war which I'm sure you will, you will be persuaded by our panelists if you don't adhere to this view now, a war that is very likely to be extremely hard and extremely long and extremely uncertain for the reasons that I will mention in a moment.  That war we have and we also have a response.  And that response is far less than auspicious.  I'm not going to prejudge or preview what Nikolas and Fiona and Radek will say about Putin's response, but I think it is all known to all of you.  We are witnessing a very disturbing erosion of Russian national democracy in its heart which is the local self-government.  And I will stop at that.

Now, you will also note as students of Russian history, that all the wars that I mentioned to you are the wars which Russia lost.  Now, this gives us and the United States and the policy makers in the west, confronts us with a very painful dilemma.  We, on the one hand, must indeed to somehow, with very limited resources and influence, persuade Russia to change its policy in Chechnya because it is the Chechnya-based terrorism that is causing deaths in Russia and I'm convinced will expand beyond Russia to Europe.  But at the same time we are trying to and ought to try to help Russia as much as we can in the war on terrorism itself.  Those are the extremely complicated issues.  This is a dual policy, tremendous intricacy.  And the United States are not very good in pursuing policies of dual track policies of this type of delicacy and stakes.

Let me mention two more things in conclusion of my remarks.  First, while we're wishing Russia every success in the war on terrorism, as I mentioned, the preliminary signs are not good.  And they're not good for the reasons, two reasons, two structural reasons.  And I think other reasons will be given by both Nikolas and Vladimir among others, the reasons on the ground, the tactical, political, economic, and military reasons.  But there are two big structural reasons.  The first one is that after two very dirty wars, horrific human rights abuses, incredible brutality, the death of at least 130,000 Chechens, Russia has very little credibility in Chechnya, outside Chechnya, and in the world at large for any genuine organic long-lasting pacification of Chechnya.  And thus, the erosion over a very long period of time of the terrorist-based networks there.

The reasons for the lack of credibility are obvious.  I mentioned some of them.  The most important one is that the more, more of the same, which is what we're hearing now from the Russian leadership, is simply not going to work.  And in a paper that will be published soon, I come up with one solution to this problem.  But I will not touch on it now.  Let me just mention the fact that this is one of the two structural problems with pacification of Chechnya, the lack of credibility by Russia, even if it wanted to.

The second one is that there is simply no easy solutions left.  The people, even the most dramatic and creative ones which would have worked five years ago, certainly would have worked ten years ago, are not available to Russia today.  One solution, one dramatic solution that some people invoke is walking away from Chechnya and granting it independence today.  This is not a solution anymore because walking away from Chechnya today will simply deliver it to a Somalia-like conglomerations of clans where the biggest one, the ones with most guns, most men, which is likely to be the former prime minister of Chechnya under Mashad Shamil Basayev, who took responsibility for Beslan as well as other terrorist acts.  Most likely he will come out on top.  And that will not bring peace, prosperity, or improvement in human rights for Chechens and non Chechens alike.  Unfortunately, it's too late to try and create an independent, secular, democratic Chechnya by giving it independence today.  Walking away from Chechnya will create on the borders of Russia, and by extension on the borders of Europe, something akin to, at this point, something akin to an Afghanistan-like state and the Taliban.  Shamil Basayev, at this point, again, let me underscore, at this point after all the Russian abuse and wars in Chechnya, is no more interested in secular, independent, democratic Chechnya than Osama Bin Laden was interested in creating a secular, independent, democratic Afghanistan when he fought the Soviets there in the mid-1980s.  Chechnya could come to that point, but it will come to that through a long transitional period with not so much Russian, but international assistance.  And, again, I don't want to go into that.  I may touch upon that in questions and answers.

So in conclusion, we have something that has ominous echos in Russian history.  We have a beginning of the war with very uncertain outcome, a war for which the current Russian leadership has absolutely no creative ideas or solutions or tools or weapons.  And at the same time the beginning of a far-reaching political restructuring as announced by President Putin on September 13, which also looks extremely inauspicious.  I'm afraid we're in for a very, very troubling period which bears very close watching by the United States.

Well, thank you for this.  And I will be going now to Nikolas Gvosdev.

MR. GVOSDEV:  As someone who studies history, I'm always reluctant when one looks at a conflict in the current day to want to project back and to say that conflicts are somehow passed along genetically from one generation to the next as if they're inevitable and bound to happen.  But at the same time, one cannot but help to be struck by some of the similarities and continuities with regard to some of the conflicts in the North Caucasus really stretching back to the mid-18th Century.  But if we were to read some of the reports that were being sent to St. Petersburg in the 1780s about what was happening in the mountains of the Caucasus, we would read reports about Moslem preachers coming from overseas to stir up mountain tribes or questions about raiding and kidnappings being conducted and questions about finding reliable local allies who would help to, help the empire to consolidate its control over the highlands.

And I think that some of these patterns have continued to this day.  Let me just take one of them.  For example, in the mid-18th Century, you had in the North Caucasus what could be termed a war of missionaries.  The attempt by the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Empire, and the Russian Empire to try to gain allies in the highlands through religious conversions.  And how different groups fell on that choice in the 18th Century has helped to determine alliances down to this present day.  So that the mid-18th Century, the Chechens and the Ingush, for example, fell firmly into the orbit of Sunni-Islam being propagated by the Ottoman Empire.  The Ossetians, on the other hand, chose to convert or in some cases reconvert to Orthodox Christianity and in so doing aligned themselves much more closely with the Russian Empire as their perceived co-religionists.  And when we look at why was an attack done in Beslan in Ossetia, where you have a history even to this day of tension between different ethnic groups in some cases predicated on memories of this religious struggle from the past, there is some continuity there where even to this day the perception that Ossetians tend to be more pro-Russian, pro-Moscow within the Caucasus region as opposed to other nationalities that fought the Russian Empire and did so sometimes in the name of religion.  And, again, in the 19th Century, the attempt at Imam Chamil [ph.] to unite the North Caucasus not on an ethnic basis but to try to use Islam as a basis for confederation of different tribes and clans that could fight beyond narrow interests and work in a regional context.

And then, of course, why Chamil ultimately failed not simply that he was ground down by superior fire power brought by the imperial administration, but also that the Russian Empire succeeded in finding local elites whose interests aligned them with the Russian Empire.  Usually they were landowners, or others, who wanted the security and opportunity that the empire could provide, and particular opportunity to rise in the imperial military.  And so after 1859 when you have the cessation of the major conflict between the Chechens and other of the caucasian highlanders with the Russian Empire, you're able to develop a modus vivendi between particularly the Chechens and the imperial government that essentially granted a wide degree of autonomy to the Chechens.  They were among the few of the people in the Russian Empire who were not subject to the imperial draft for the imperial military, but, in fact, were encouraged to volunteer.  And, in fact, some of the empire's leading divisions, particularly in World War I, were composed of Chechen volunteers who turned a marshal tradition into the service of the Russian Empire.  And found that serving in the imperial military was a way to rise to high rank and prestige.

And my suspicion and my gut feeling from the meeting that Fiona and I both attended and listening to some of the comments that President Putin made is that in the back of at least some people's mind is the idea if only we could get to this kind of post 1859 solution wide ranging internal autonomy for Chechnya and a way for Chechens, however, to remain within the framework of the Russian State, this would be the ideal solution.  The problem between 1859 and today, and this is something I think my fellow panelists will go into greater detail on, is that in 1859 you had a local elite in Chechnya that commanded allegiance, that had followers who could reach this settlement with the Russian Empire, and could deliver on it.  You had Imam Chamil in his surrender to imperial authorities essentially give a blessing to this solution and was able to convince his own followers to lay down their weapons and accept this compromise solution.  And that, I think, is the critical issue today.  With whom would such a settlement be reached?  And who would have the authority to enforce it?

And it's very clear that when one speaks with senior officials in the Russian Government today, certainly Pasif [ph.] is not an acceptable candidate.  He's not a Chamil figure with whom negotiations could be held.  And there is a perception that there is no other separatist leader who could deliver on a settlement.  And so what you have now is this attempt to try to create a new pro-Moscow Chechnya elite.  And, of course, this was the strategy behind promoting the former Kadir Kadri who, in fact, had fought against Russian in the first Chechen wars, this kind of perhaps acceptable figure.  But his assassination sort of has cut back on that strategy.  And now this attempt to try to find Chechen leaders, village leaders, leaders of the Chechen Diaspora in Moscow and elsewhere who maybe have some credibility who can form a new government.  But this, I think, has become the critical, critical issue of finding local Chechens who are prepared to accept autonomy within the Russian Federation and who have the ability to keep order in the Republic.

Because this has also been another going back to the historical sections of the conflict, why, why is that when one looks at the history of the 18th and the 19th Century that the Russian Empire was able to succeed in building its imperial edifice in the Caucasus.  And this, again, goes to the fact that other nationalities in the region, other ethnic groups, looked to Moscow for protection against, particularly against the Chechens and against other of the highland tribes that they felt made life difficult for them through raiding, kidnapping.  We forget today, but the Caucasus provided a steady stream of slaves and unwilling members of the harems of the sultan and other middle eastern dispirits, many of whom were supplied via the slave markets of the Black Sea.  And so that one reason why some groups welcomed the Russians as the Russian Empire expanded southward was the belief that they could obtain protection.  And we see, again, these same dynamics today.  Why is Dagestan, why does Ossetia, why do these other republics around Chechnya often seem to be those that are most anxious in keeping Chechnya within the Russian Federation, the ones arguing the strongest against granting independence is the fear that the chaos and instability that occurs in Chechnya maybe affects Muscovites once in a while when there is a bombing in the metro or you had the attack on the airliners, but it's those neighboring republics that have to deal with the day in, day out consequences of instability within Chechnya, the prospect of raids, kidnappings, and so on and so forth, if there isn't a government in Chechnya that can establish and maintain a certain degree of law and order.

So once again, this kind of three-sided dynamic where the conflict in the region is not simply between a federal center and a separatist province seeking independence, but also has features of a civil war within Chechnya between different clans.  Because there are several pro-Moscow clans within Chechnya that see their own interests as remaining within a Russian Federation.  And then the question of other regional leaders who have an interest in either containing Chechnya or seeing it not become independent.  Those pressures then build and make it difficult.

And I think that this is one reason why when people say, why can't it just be a simple matter of negotiations between the Moscow center and a leader in Chechnya is to ignore some of these other complexities of what other regional leaders around Chechnya, both within Russia, to some extent also in the separatist regions in Georgia, also have input into how this conflict has been going on and how it would need to be resolved.

Just to, interestingly enough on the question of more recent history, and this touches, again, on some of President Putin's comments, it was interesting that at least in the semi-privacy of the group that he had assembled at his dacha, to admit that he would not perhaps have gone to war in 1994.  That he did not think that the Yeltsin strategy had been particularly effective, that perhaps there would have been different ways, different solutions.  But then the sense that this is all water under the bridge.  That 1859, 1994, even 1999, the situation has changed so completely that solutions that might have worked five years ago or ten years ago are no longer on the table.

And I think that the one historical lesson that they are increasingly motivated by is that the war of the 19th Century took 25 years, from Imam Chamil's initial uprising until his final capture. And, you know, this is--we're only 10 years into the current conflict in Chechnya.  So from that thinking, if you have another 15 years to go, and you just simply are going to try to wear down any remaining resistance groups until you've reached a point where an exhausted population ceases to support or give any kind of aid or assistance to separatist and terrorist groups.  And you develop this new cadre of pro-Moscow Chechnya leaders that are able and willing to take power in the republic. I think you very much now have this mindset of we're going to settle in for the long haul.  And we may have additional losses that we'll face, but the dye is cast and there is no way forward other than a final victory that decisively eliminates the remaining groups.  And I think that on that note, perhaps--

MR. ARON:  If I could just add something before Radek goes.  You reminded me of something, Nick.  And that is that, I mean, it may not matter to the Russians that much, but it certainly matters to the Chechens.  And that is that we know, not from the fraudulent results of the referendum on independence or the constitutional referendum or the elections, but we know from very solid polling data conducted by Vala Data [ph.], among others, Vala Anhumkin [ph.], this year that the majority of the Chechens actually want some sort of association with Moscow with a very certain degree of autonomy.  And most of them did vote, did turn out to vote in the referendum.

And the reason for that I think largely again is the experience of the de facto independence from the fall of 1996 to 1999 was not just disappointing but utterly, I think, horrific for the Chechens, first of all.  Because President Musharraf declared Chechnya an Islamic republic, which most of the Chechens were very secular have always been very, kind of cosmopolitan in their outlook.  There's up to a million of them living in Moscow today.  Did not want the Islamic republic, no more than they wanted the Islamic republic of the North Caucasus which then Shamil Basayev now declared his goal.  And secondly because the republic turned into, you know, Sharia-based state with public executions translated on national television on the Friendship of People's Square in the Capital Grosnia, kidnappings, gangs roaming, slave trade.  All of that, I think, certainly persuaded most Chechens that given a choice, they would rather be very considerably autonomous from Russia, but yet somehow protected from the chaos that would be involved in turning over Chechnya now to the warlords.

MR. ARON:  Vladek?

MR. SIKORSKI:  I think the reaction to the terrorist outrages in Russia in Europe was somewhat similar to the reactions that Europe experienced to the 9-11 events here in the United States.  Marches in European capitals.  In Poland, for example, I have a whole batch of reports about children getting involved.  For example, an 11 year old Dennis had been gathering money for a year.  He wanted to buy himself a computer.  He got thousands of zloty, which is about $200.  But when the outrage happened, he gave it all to help the Beslan children.  And there were huge public collections of money and equipment for Ossetia.  One of the largest Polish charity groups collected half a million lates, that's $150,000, in a matter of a couple of weeks.

In Keltz, a provincial town in Poland, several hundred people burned candles around the column to mark the outrage.  All of the Russian consulates in Poland had pro-Russian, pro-victims demonstrations, including candle burning and keeping a moment of silence.  All of the schools in Poland on the Monday after the tragedy, held a moment of silence to honor the victims.  There is also a huge attempt to invite the traumatized children of Beslan to spend some time in Poland to try to help them get over it.  And the Russian consulate is getting involved in that.  For example, the town of Chesterhover [ph.] has invited 40 children.  The Polish Minister of Defense has sent three tons of medicines and other equipment.
Karitas [ph.], the Christian charity, has sent a whole plane.  Even Polish soldiers in Iraq serving in Iraq had a special [inaudible] for the victims of Beslan.  And Parliament unanimously passed a resolution condemning the terrorist action, as did the European Parliament.  And then there was 150,000 people in Rome marching from the Coliseum to the capital to express their outrage.

Unfortunately the honeymoon, if you like, the moment of solidarity lasted even shorter in the case of Russia than in the case of 9-11.  And that is, I think, entirely due to the speech that Leon has already mentioned.  Because I think in Europe in general people look at this war just like as the other struggles with militant Islam, less as an ideological war on terrorism, but as a traditional territorial disputes that we in Europe are very familiar with.  And, in fact, I will stop using the word, the expression war on terrorism because I think terrorism is a method that terrorists use to further their causes.  But you can't have a war on the kitchen knife or on blitzkrieg.  Both can kill you, but you can't have war with it.

And immediately after the moment of solidarity with the victims, there is of course the historical reflection.  I personally cannot help but remember the roots of this conflict because my own birthday comes on the 23rd of February, Red Army Day.  And that has something to do with Chechnya, because it was on Red Army Day in 1944 and on the pretext of Red Army Day that the entire Chechen Nation was gathered in Grosnia, surrounded by armed guards, and then deported to the wastes of Kazakhstan and elsewhere, where half of them die.  And I think that unless we remember the history of genocide by the Soviet authorities, we will never understand the conflict.

The--so this inability to deal with our own past, the fact that the crimes of communism in Russia only had a short, brief window of interest in the Russian psyche at the end of Peristrika [ph.] is, I think, at the root of this.  Because I think if the Russian people felt it in their bones, like the German people feel it in their bones because we force them to, that conducting another genocide is simply not on.  This war would not be happening.  But it is.  It is in a country in which just last week a new statute to Felix Dzerzhinsky was unveiled, and a city named after Dzerzhinsky, Dzerzhinsk.  Now, imagine a new statute to Heinrich Himmler being unveiled and Himmlerstadt in Germany.  Even though neo-nazi parties have received 60 percent of the vote in East Germany in the last few days, that, I think, is unthinkable.

I think it's important to have the Russian imperial perspective in mind.  But the other perspective is, of course, of the captured nations and the former captured nations, also in Central Europe and the Baltics.  And, of course, those countries are particularly vulnerable and sensitive to any reawakening of the imperialist spirit, because they tend to become the first victims.  So when over Chechnya you have things like the basically the destruction of free electronic media, it happened already during the second Chechnya war, and it's being completed now.  I mean, we now have Brezneovite methods of dealing with journalists.  Annapolit Koskive [ph.] was poisoned when she tried to reach Chechnya.  Other journalists were summarily arrested just to prevent them from covering the story.  And above all, the very simple fact that Russian people, if they wanted to know anything about the developing crisis, had to tune into foreign broadcasts or foreign radio, television internet sites.

Well, what does that remind us of?  That is a return, perhaps not to Brezhnev, but to Andropof [ph.].  That was the moment when it was felt that if we only can tighten up and bring some discipline into the system, everything would be well.  The other similar features are that it's really the high oil price that supports a fundamentally dysfunctional over centralized system.  And, of course, we seem to have the beginnings of a Brezhnev mach two doctrine, that regions that have once been captured by Russia will stay captured by Russia even if their inhabitants wish otherwise.

So I think the overwhelming long term reaction in particularly Central Europe is that President Putin's reaction to the crisis is inept and counter productive reaction, in my judgement, is going to reinforce a trend that's been there for a while, the trend to fear Russia more.

The program that I direct, the New Atlantic Initiative, was originally founded in 1996 with the aim of enlarging NATO of enlarging the EU.  But one of our main aims also was to keep the door to all these western institutions open to Russia if only Russia would attempt and aspire to fulfilling the criteria the ways that these institutions carry on in their treatment for minorities and their treatment of free media rule of law, and so on.  And I'm afraid that President Putin's reaction is making our goal less realistic.

And I fear that the reaction further down the road will be that fewer Russian businesses will be welcome in Europe because people will be afraid that, for example, in the oil sector that these Russian companies are not there for business but for geopolitical meddling.  I mean, it will be a downside.  And, of course, now with Russia granting itself the right to strike abroad at the terrorist, and let's be clear, I mean, Mr. Basayev has asked for it and Russia is absolutely in its right to liquidate this person with extreme prejudice, but the fact that Russia now operates death squads that have already been used in the Gulf to strike a previous Chechen president, and that is now--Russia is reassuring us that in its struggles against foreign countries where terrorists may be, and I take it to mean Georgia, Russia will not, for the moment, use nuclear weapons.  That hardly sends a reassuring message to the former captured nations.

I'm not going to go into details about what may or may not be done in Chechnya, but I'd just like to note that if you are in a hole, on the whole it's best to stop digging.  And if, as President Putin apparently said, well, the policy was misconceived from the start, then perhaps a revision is required.  The name that's not yet been mentioned, but I would just throw out as a possible partner of a solution in a solution is, of course, Mr. Meshado [ph.].  He was part of the solution of the first Chechen war.  Of course, part of that deal was that there would be resources to strengthen his authority in Chechnya and to help to stabilize the situation.  Which if those, if those promises had been confirmed, perhaps independent Chechnya might have been a slightly more bearable, predictable place.  But, of course, "Tos ineverity," as the Chechs say, this will not come back.  So I think both for the Chechens and for Russia as a formally announced democracy, this is all very bad news indeed.

MR. ARON:  Thank you, Radek, thank you very much.

Vladimir?

MR. SOCOR:  Thank you.

Last month the Jamestown Foundations President Glen Howard and I took a field trip to Apasian South Ossetia.  My presentation is largely formed by the impressions gathered on that trip.  Shortly before we took that field trip, we witnessed from afar an operation that bore all the hallmarks of a transnational terrorist operation.  So-called volunteers, some of them armed, from Transdiester [ph.] Coban Cossacks and Uphase [ph.] crossed several regions of the Russian Federation armed to South Ossetia.  The appeal to the volunteers was broadcast on Russian State television channels several times.  The volunteers most likely reached South Ossetia via the rocky tunnel leading from the Russian Federation into Georgia territory.  They held an assembly in the center of Siem Valley [ph.] the capital of South Ossetia, then moved a few kilometers northward to hold military exercises jointly with South Ossetian forces.

These events were amply televised on Russian channels, Georgian channels, and on South Ossetian television.  There was no response, whatsoever, from international organizations or from the United States or from the European Union to this obvious operation of transnational terrorism.  There was a feeling of deja vu to this operation.  We all remember that a Chechen legion commanded by none other than Chamil Basayev intervened in Uphasia [ph.] against Russian forces on the side--against Georgian forces on the side of Russian forces in the Uphas.  And was instrumental in the mass ethnic cleansing of Georgia as well as Uphasia.  The Uphas legion was armed and trained by the Gerriu [ph.], and was treated as heroes, as liberators on their return to Russia proper.  It was only then that Basayev and his legion turned their weapons against their former sponsors.

We held in Valia and in Sohoomi [ph.] lengthy in depth talks with secessionist leaderships, with South Ossetia leaders including Bolis Chochia [ph.], Vince Hilvali [ph.], and past leaders, including Raoul Hajimba [ph.] in Sohoomi, Hajimba being the front running presidential candidate in the upcoming elections in Uphasia, blessed by Putin, incidentally, personally at an effusive meeting in Moscow.

I'm going to summarize the views of the two secessionist leaderships as they were laid out to us.  There was a striking lack of interest on the part of both groups in the classical national or nationalist agenda.  No--there was scant interest in issues related to language, education, preservation of national identity or statehood, very little of that, almost nothing, none of that.  Instead, their goal was succession to the Russian Federation, incorporation into the Russian Federation.  Both groups of leaders openly displayed their allegiance to the Russian State. They framed their argument in terms of historic loyalty to that state, historic loyalty to the Russian Federation is the historic successor of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.  No aspiration to independent statehood, only to incorporation in Russia.

Correspondingly, there was no interest on their part in various constitutional options that would lead to their remaining a part of a reformed or federalized Georgia State.  We cited various options that had been under discussion in recent years.  Federal status was in a federalized Georgia, broad autonomy, confederation, association of two states Uphasia and Georgia, of South Ossetia and Georgia.  All those were dismissed as irrelevant to the real goal, incorporation in the Russian Federation.

Both groups displayed self-confidence bordering on smugness based on Russia's recent muscle flexing in the region.  Equally striking was the fact that neither of the two groups took the west into account in their political calculations.  The west did not figure as a factor at all in their calculations.  They were supremely confident that Rus--they, themselves, that Russia will settle both issue, the Uphasia and the Ossetian issues with them and for them in the absence of any serious western involvement.

During our field trip we also were, we also witnessed the practical effects on the ground of Russia's policy of the last few years of incorporating Uphasia and South Ossetia de facto.  Russia will not pose a clear cut case of military aggression or of outright annexation.  It has pioneered in South Ossetia and Uphasia a novel method of incorporating parts of the territories of a neighboring country into the Russian Federation-- Yeah.  I just noticed that.  Is it working now?

Okay.  So Russia has pioneered in South Ossetia and Uphasia, which Georgia is a target, a novel method, that of incorporating parts of the territories of a neighboring states de facto establishing facts on the ground, awaiting a subsequent formalization of these steps.  And I jotted down about eight directions along which this process is moving.  Let me read you this list of how, how this works.  Yes.

As you will see after going through this checklist, these directions are coordinated centrally in Moscow and are promoted by various departments of the Russian Government at the most official level.  The first is the manipulation of ethnic issues by freezing federal negotiation through Russia's monopoly on--

[Technical interruption.]

MR. SOCOR:  Secondly, installing political leaderships loyal to Moscow usually affiliated in one way or another with Russia's security services.  Thirdly, isolating those bits of territory from the international communications and media space and connecting it or plotting it into Russia's communications and media space.  Fourthly, creating separatist groups led by specialists and [inaudible] Russian army officers.  Fifth, introducing the Rouble as the sole "legal" standard. Sixth, and this is Putin's special innovation, conferral of Russia's leadership on residents of Uphasia and South Ossetia en masse with almost no formalities.

As a result Russia is now officially claiming at the level of the Foreign Affairs Ministry and other governmental agencies, it's claiming a right of intrusive protection of Russia's citizens thereby created.  And that is annexation through citizenship export.  I also called it cessation dumping.

Seventh, Russia stated private economic entities are taking over Georgia state properties in Uphasia and establishing direct railroad and shipping links with it.  The departure points of those shipping and railroad links is Soching [ph.] the residents of President Putin.  It can be said that this is going under Putin's gaze.  And eighth, Russian troops, along with Uphasia and South Ossetian troops, are controlling both sides of those two sectors of the liberated organized Georgia/Russia border.  Russian officials, political officials, no longer refer to those sectors as the Russia/Georgia border.  In this manner, the internationally recognized liberty valley border is being erased in practice.

This is why Russia is in no hurry to offer a clear cut case of annexation of a former territory.  Various options are being discussed already at this stage for formalizing the realities thus created on the ground.  The most commonly discussed option is that of associate status, granting Uphasia and possibly Ossetia the status of associate members of the Russian Federation.  We ask the Uphasia leaders what's their view and their Russian sponsor's view the associate status might entail.  And I'm going to read you the checklist of what this might entail.  First, automatic dual citizenship, Russian and Uphase.  Second, Uphasia's residents to vote in elections to Russia's Dumat.  Third, Uphasia to be included within Russia's customs borders and in the Rouble zone.  Fourth, Russia and Uphasia border troops jointly to guard the "Uphasia/Georgia borders."  And finally Russian military forces to be stationed in Uphasia permanently for its protection.  This would be the concept of associate status for Uphasia in the Russian Federation.

South Ossetian leaders presiding over a smaller entity compared to Uphasia are rather less ambitious.  They seek outright annexation to the Russian Federation via North Ossetia.  Both groups are content to wait until current trends reach full fruition.  They're in no hurry.  They are confident that current trends will reach fruition in the way they wish.

We also witnessed the peace keeping operation, so-called at close hand.  Russia has a monopoly of peace keeping in both cases as it does incidentally in the Trasnestria Region of Holdover [ph.].  The OSC's role in South Ossetia is especially pathetic.  The OSC stations a grand total of six observers, plus military observers for South Ossetia, six up to four--the number of observers was recently increased from four to six.  They only patrol in daytime.  They are in no position either to detect or to respond to violations of the cease fire agreement by the South Ossetian forces or the Russian forces within South Ossetia.  They don't even have a helicopter to watch what's going on, on the ground.  They are redundant.  They are superfluous.  Their presence is a sham.

They don't even report the violations.  They conduct themselves according to the principle that they can only report what they, themselves see.  But they are so poorly equipped and so undermanned that they cannot see what's happening.  And they are so politically intimidated that they cannot report even what they occasionally see.  For example, the operation of the so-called volunteers who held a demonstrative assembly in the center of Siem Valley where the OSC has a field office.  Apparently the OSC observers, this was in July, apparently they were all on vacation whether literally or figuratively.  The fact is that the Siem Valley they reported nothing on the ground that they did not see.  They did not report much less protest against the joint military exercises which incidentally used Russian provided artillery and armor.  Those were heavily televised, as I mentioned.

The OSC initially took the position that they do not report what they see on television but what they, themselves, see.  However, in the minutely detailed negotiations at the OSC consul in Vienna regarding the OSC field missions, Russia constantly prevents any reenforcement of this mission in terms of manpower or equipment.  So this mission cannot see anything because Russia in Vienna uses its veto power to prevent this, to starve it of manpower and equipment.  Neither can the missions see or report the repeated intrusions of Russian aircraft coming from North Ossetia into South Ossetia.  They don't see it because they can't.  And while Georgia is more  slightly better equipment for that sees, the OSC remains silent.

This brings me to the third part of my presentation in which I will try to outline a few recommendations for western policy makers on how to deal with this situation.  To be sure Georgia is an emergent democracy at this stage.  But I would like to, I mean, the Georgians ought to recognize that their case for western support cannot rest solely on democratic considerations or on appeals to democratic solidarity by Washington or by Brussels collectively.  Those appeals need to rest on strategic interests and western policy makers ought to take their own strategic interests into account in shaping policy toward Georgia.

The fundamental strategic fact is that Georgia functions as a vitally necessary two-way transit corridor from the standpoint of western interests.  Transit of Caspian energy westward and transit of American-led anti-terrorist forces eastward.  Georgia along with [inaudible], they form an indivisible tandem, form the indispensable two-way corridor for these types of transit.  Therefore, the EuroAtlantic world needs in Georgia a consolidated functional state, reform capable, and apt to uphold western strategic interest in the region without fear of blackmail from Russia via the two secessionist regions.  Georgia will not be a viable state, will not be a viable EuroAtlantic ally as its economy is hemorrhaging via the two secessionist enclaves and as long as it is to Russian, to Russian threat of blackmail via those enclaves.

I think the first step that Russians should take is to renew the Gited [ph.], Georgia training and equipped program for internal security forces.  The program was unjustifiably discontinued in the summer of this year after training only four Georgian battalions, training them incompletely, without enabling them to operate as a brigade.  The four battalions can only operate individually as battalions, but not as a brigade.  Currently Washington's intention is to continue the program in such a way as to enable these battalions to undertake limited operations as a brigade, deliberately, however, not endowing them with certain capabilities, for example, not endowing them with anti-tank capabilities, which would be crucial in the situation we face.

If we want Georgia to be viable and to have viable military forces, to be able to fend for itself in that regional environment, it is necessary for Georgia to have a viable security force.  Four battalions are a good beginning, but not enough.  Georgia is asking Washington to train--the complete the training of the four battalions to enable them to operate as a brigade with all types of missions and to train a second brigade.  If a second brigade is trained and equipped, then Georgia offers to send 800 or 900 soldiers as part of a UN protection force in Baghdad.  Four countries have offered to contribute to such a force, Georgia, Romania, Ukraine, and I forget the fourth countries.  It's one of the former captive nations as well.  I think it's clearly in the common EuroAtlantic interest to complete the training equipped program, especially since the second stage, training the second brigade would cost much less compared to training the first brigade because the infrastructure is already in place.

Second, western policy makers need to recognize that externally supported armed separatism is one aspect of international terrorism, of cross-border terrorist operations.  Thirdly, western policy makers in Washington and Brussels need to develop a conflict resolution strategy for Georgia and for the South Caucuses for Black Sea region generally.  There is no such strategy at the moment.  Fourthly, Georgia in the first place, but also its western friends, need to raise in international organizations the issue of observance of international law and order in the South Caucuses.  International law and order has not operated in the South Caucuses since 1991.  Borders are being violated or erased with impunity.  Foreign troops are stationed on the territories of states that are unwilling to host them.

In sum in this regional vital strategic interest to the west, international law does not operate and does not protect really our partners in that region.  They, themselves, must, with the support of their western friends, raise the issue of upholding international law and order in this region.  The issue needs to be raised in the United Nations and other international organizations not because the UN can do anything of a practical consequences, it cannot.  But the issue needs to be highlighted and then it needs to be placed on the table of negotiations in appropriate forms with hands on western participation.

My next recommendation would be that NATO should reconsider earlier proposals for it assume a peace keeping role in the Black Sea region, including Georgia, Uphasia, South Ossetia, and in Kalibar.  This issue was prominent on the agenda of the NATO/Russia summit and the U.S./Russia summit which were held back to back in May 2002.  The joint communiques of both summits envisaged specifically joint Russia/NATO, actually NATO/Russia as it was formulated and U.S./Russia imports a conflict resolution and peace keeping in May 2002.  Nothing has been heard of that since, since then.  The issue needs to be put back on the negotiating table.

And finally, this would be my final recommendation, the U.S. needs to become, needs to insert itself in the European Union's internal policy debates on the issue just as the United States has done so with respect to Turkish membership of the European Union.  In the same way the United States can play a constructive role, if it chooses to do so, in the European Union's internal debates regarding policy and strategy in the south Caucuses.  The European Union has no such policy and no such strategy at the moment.  Only a synergy of the United States its EuroAtlantic partners in Europe can solve these problems.  Otherwise, the international order will continue to erode and ultimately collapse in the South Caucuses setting a dangerous precedent which Russia can apply elsewhere in the post Soviet space and possibly even beyond.  Thank you.

MR. ARON:  Thank you very much, Vladimir.

Now, we're going to Fiona, who has been very patient.

MS. HILL:  Thanks very much, Leon.

I'm just going to apologize in advance, but I'm going to try to refer to notes--well, I literally just got off a plane and I'm a bit jet lagged.  I want to at least try to be coherent rather than just sort of talking off the top of my head here.  And I would also like to make some references because I've been scribbling notes with what my colleagues have said to try to tie things together as well as to offer you a little bit more of what Putin actually said in this meeting.  Because I think it's very important to write this down and to try to at least call him on his bluff and try to hold him to some of the things that he actually said which, in some cases, went beyond what he's actually said in public before.

I also wanted to just finish up with Vladimir has said with another historical reference.  Leon Aron didn't make so much of a slip when he said that Vladimir had just been in the North Caucuses because in many respects North and South Caucuses are artificial demarcations.  And for Russia, certainly, historically these two areas have been tightly linked together.  I can see, by the way, that Mr. Putin is having his own double standard on these issues about Chechnya and South Ossetia and Uphasia that Moscow still does see the two regions of South and North Caucuses very closely connected together, and not just through the division of South and North Ossetia, but much more broadly.  And historically it's always been the case and in the Russian Imperial period that it took pacifying the South Caucuses first before the North Caucuses were brought under control.  And I suspect that we're seeing something of a similar approach today.  So I hope that we've borne in mind some of the things that Vladimir Socor just said.

Now, I wanted to make four comments on what Beslan has shown us, the incident in Beslan.  First of all I think it's shown us that the situation in the North Caucuses as a whole, so in all of this Bulge region which, in fact, in Russia and Parlance extends not just along the autonomous republics, these ethnically autonomous republics of North Caucuses but also into Stabroko [ph.], Customsikai [ph.], and as far north as Rustovondon [ph.], that this whole region is becoming increasingly desperate in a social economic and political level, as well as security.

So this is not just simply a question of Chechnya that we're talking about here.  And Russia has much bigger problems.  And this is, of course what Nick was eluding to in his opening presentation that we're seeing the reemergence of conflicts here that have very long historical roots, but also conflicts that we saw very much in their active phase in the early 1990s, which are very much the legacy of the collapse of the Soviet Union.  And this also includes, of course, Uphasia and South Ossetia, not just North Ossetia and Ingosedia and upheavals in Dagestan.  I think Russia has now recognized this.  The appointment of Kuzak as the new federal envoy to the southern Russia to the North Caucasus region, a key Putin allay, underscores this.  And the Russian Government has said that they're going to have a new economic plan for the North Caucuses.

One can, of course, ask questions as to how effective this is likely to be.  But it is the case that Putin has seen it fit to pull someone away from a very important modernization program at the center in Russia, Kuzak was in charge of the Bureaucratic reforms, to send himself.  So this is, again, a sign that Putin realizes he's got a lot problem on his hands.  It's just a question, of course, if he's going to deal with them in the right way.

And the second thing that Beslan showed us is, of course, Russia's deficiencies in dealing with domestic terrorism.  Unfortunately, very little seems to have been learned not just from the Debrovka [ph.], the Naudal, [ph.], the theater incident, but also much earlier incidents in the first Chechen war [inaudible].  Unfortunately, we repeated a pattern of rather feckless dealing with this in spite, of course, of some very evident active personal bravery, which we mustn't overlook.  There were an awful lot of people who rushed into a very horrible crossfire there to try to do something.  But this does not, of course, detract from the organizational institutional problems that Russia is facing right now.

The disinformation campaign in the media discusses even further about these deficiencies.  In many of the discussions that Nick and I had with not just Mr. Putin, but many of the political figures and analysts, it was very clear that the disinformation campaign was like flack being scattered in the front of incoming enemy fire to distract everybody because frankly people didn't know what was doing on, the deliberate confusion of the number of hostages, although people on the ground were very clear about the large numbers.  Who was involved on the terrorist side.  Mr. Putin, himself, couldn't get the numbers of Arabs right.  And in our presentation that he'd already revealed to the media when we were meeting with him the, the official figure that was out in the media were there were 10 Arabs involved in Beslan.  He said 8 and his translator was corrected him, which was meant for some sort of amusing appearances there.

And the third issue on Beslan is that what it has shown is in the aftermath is that President Putin unfortunately doesn't have many ideas on how to solve his problems.  The internal security services are in disarray.  One of President Putin's most important counterparts told us that the MVD, the Interior Ministry is the most corrupt institution in Russia outside of the education services.  We've seen many reports on the bribes that suicide bombers have to pay to get onto planes, $34.  The ease in which the trucks could make their progression to Beslan.  And it was also clear from discussions I had with people in other security services, in this case the military security service, that the FSB, you know, of course there's some inter-institutional interagency competition here.  So it's in their interest to say this.  But they did say very clearly the FSB doesn't have the capacity to gather intelligence.

One of the main areas of irritation that Mr. Putin made clear even in his national address but also now meeting with us was a reference to western security services, the operative level who were basically dealing directly with the Chechens.  Most of the people I talked to after the fact said that this was, of course, irritation that he as the former head of the FSB is very annoyed that western intelligence services may have better information that he does at this point because the FSB doesn't have the capacity anymore to infiltrate the various groups and find out who is linked to who.  So this is obviously a great disappointment for Mr. Putin.  That was very evident in the way that he talked with Ednova Gariva [ph.] and in subsequent presentations.

And finally on the new government changes that have been precipitated by Beslan.  What it certainly seems to me and to many others is that Putin had something already in his top drawer, you know, kind of an envelope, "Open in case of emergency," and just sort of whipped out something that he'd already prepared on strengthening the vertigo of power, even though this doesn't, of course, relate, the vertigo of power being, of course, the strengthening of the lot nines to the federal center even though this doesn't exactly relate to the problem that he is facing as a result of the events in Beslan.  And it's not, of course, very clear that this is going to help.  He's also notably revived what was the very mullibaned [ph.] nationalities ministry that he'd actually just done away with himself in his government reshuffle in March.  So that's, again, a sign of some desperation there.

And, in fact, everybody I talked to over the three weeks that I spent in Russia felt that there was an absolute vacuum of ideas now about what to happen.  And so that any plan can make its way up to the top at this point.

Now, Nick talked a lot about the situation in the North Caucasus.  But I do want to remind us that we should keep a very close eye over the next few weeks on events in the North Caucasus as they unfold.  There's been some reports on this in the New York Times and other papers about fears about what will happen after the end of the mountain tree 40 days of mourning in North Ossetia when there are likely to be calls for revenge attacks.  I think this is highly likely.

If we think back to the early 1990s when the Ossetian/Ingush conflict broke out, which, remember more than 100 people died at that point.  And there was a spate of hostage taking.  And, in fact, it was only a swap of hostages that finally helped move toward the final settlement that had to be brokered by them by Moscow.  The conflict in the region of North Ossetia over the Prigorodny District, which is a region that was taken from the Ingush [ph.] during the Stalin deportations and handed over to North Ossetia has never been resolved.  It's still in the same status quo that it was in the early 1990s.  And Beslan is right at the edge of this region.  So this was obviously a deliberate attempt to reignite that conflict in seizing this school in Beslan.  It can't be really interpreted in any other way.

The fact that Ingush have at least been identified in the press, even though it doesn't seem very clear that anybody at the top really knows who was who, is a big problem.  And, of course, that fact was underscored by the appearance in Beslan of former Ingush president Ruse Analchev [ph.] who managed to free some of the hostages.  This makes it all the more likely that there will be attempts to have revenge attacks against Ingush as well as Chechens.  And we have to remember there are an awful lot of Chechens throughout this area.  Around 90,000 Chechens who were originally refugees in the border region of the North Caucasus have now taken up permanent residency in places like Stabrapohl, Kriy, Kasnajar [ph.].  So there are an awful lot of innocent people who are very likely to suffer from recriminations and attacks in the event of outbreaks again of localized conflict.

And part of my impression of Putin on this occasion stressing the international dimensions of the incident in Beslan was not just another pot formulation for the sake of the international war on terrorism.  It was partly trying to deflect with rumors of vague enemies, dark enemies, dark forces governing against Russia of international terrorism was to try to deflect from this potential of revenge attacks domestically.  In part he's now realized just how much of a problem he has on his hands.

In terms of Chechnya itself Nick, Leon, and Radek have talked a little bit about this already.  There are a couple of things that Putin said in this meeting that I think are worth bearing in mind.  One of which was a reference to plans that he's not prepared to offer any autonomy to Chechnya at all.  Now, it was the independence issue where he was taking issue with.  But he actually said, and I want us to make not of this because it would be something that we should hope one can hold him to, of course, you know, it's all so questionable,  but he said he was prepared to offer maximum autonomy to Chechnya even to the point of violating the Russian constitution.  And what he means by this is actually rather a side reference to something that's been on the table for an extraordinary long time in terms of the conflict with Chechnya, which is something called Tartarstan Plus [ph.].  This is a reference to the power-sharing deal that was worked out in 1994 with the Republic of Tartarstan which, indeed, prevented the escalation of separatist tendencies there and gave the Tartars a great deal of control over their own economic and political affairs, that's been rolled back since.  But this is something that has always been on the table for Chechnya.  Yeltsin at his various times had not wanted to put it forward.  It was the base, in part, for the Hasabilt [ph.] accords in '96.  Putin has been pushed for some time to put that back on the table again.  The question is, of course, whether he will.

One other interesting fact is that he did actually spend quite a lot of time, a surprising amount of time in terms of praising the Chechens for their past loyalty to the state and accepting Russia's blame, of course not its personal blame, but Russia's blame for the injustices visited upon the Chechens including the deportation of the Chechens by Stalin to, he said in this instance Siberia and Central Asia.  And he claimed to have seen some of the camps in which the Chechens were confined and have pronounced them to be horrible.  So this is, again, something of a notable break with early statements.  Whether he was sincere or not is, of course, a question.  But he also confessed that the origins of the War on Chechnya lay inside Russia, itself, and did not lay the blame in this particular instance on international terrorism.  Again, these are subtle differences, but they're worth noting that he did say this.  Of course, he then did emphasize that the war was subsequently exploited by Islamic radicals and international terrorists.  But he didn't put that on the table until the mid-1990s, so after the denouement of relations.

He did, of course--he didn't mention the name of Maslam Mashadive [ph.] Radek introduced here.  But he did talk about broadening the dialogue with Chechens and bringing more groups into the political process.  He did mention the word political process.  And he mentioned that he might do this through parliamentary elections which were coming up.  This is the first time I'd heard of this.  Of course, given past experience, parliamentary elections are not likely to be the freest and fairest.  But, again, this is another area where perhaps we could call his bluff and see if, indeed, something can be pushed along here.

In other discussions outside of the meeting with President Putin, other Russians, including people in the military intelligence, did say that they thought that Mashad was part of the solution down the line, not on a power-sharing basis but a safe--a face-saving exit needed to be arranged, something in which he was brought into the process but at a later stage.  So that there was nobody was denying the fact that Mashadive had to be factored in, in some way.  My biggest fear, however, in watching not just President Putin's reaction and others in these meetings, but watching Russian TV at great length was that there is now a public acclaim in many influential circles for what people are calling an Israeli variant in response to the Beslan horror which is walling the Chechens in.  And Putin, himself, in his meeting did elude to the fact that an overhaul of law enforcement in the region might involve measures to prevent Chechens from leaving the territory of Chechnya.  That, of course, is quite a disturbing development if it were to happen.  But, again, this is something we need to keep our eyes on.  Because if terrorist attacks do continue, which is everyone is predicting, then the political environment in Russia will harden even further.  Even though in public opinion polls, Russians, themselves, still show that they would have a preference for a negotiated solution rather than a military solution.  But at the elite level, there are a lot of calls for much harder action against the Chechens.

In terms of the reaction to the governance changes which Leon also asked me to comment on, many people feel that Putin is really just returning to the age old pattern that Nick was also referring to, the sort of concept of a patrimonial state, sort of one very similar to the Czarist and Soviet approaches which he kept again eluding to in our discussions that says that sovereignty resides more with the leaders than the citizens.  The irony of this is, and a couple of other people at the meeting mentioned this to me too, I was sort of thinking that he sounded like he'd been reading Richard Pipe's "Russia Under the Old Regime," and using this not as a critique of Russian past, but as perhaps a blueprint for the future.  And I remember that Mikel Hodokosfski [ph.] was reading this while he was in, sitting in his cell during his, his trial.  And Putin maybe got the idea wondering why he was reading it and maybe wondering if he should do it too.  I'm sure they had different intents in reading this.

Certainly, many of the journalists who were at this meeting that Nick and I were at and in other forums in which I met with people, including people from the state run media, are very concerned that censorship will be extended even further in the wake of Beslan.  That the state has taken more of a proprietary interest now in controlling the interpretation and dissemination of the truth about key issues.  But, again, I mean, even the more state oriented media feel that more than ever Russia, obviously, needs a free information flow to be able to be an antidote to even just the basic levels of corruption of the kind that permitted the terrorists to bribe their way past check points into Beslan as well as onto the planes.  Many people are feeling, of course, that this, that all of these governance issues will do very little to improve Russian security or even the effectiveness of Moscow's governance over the regions.

What's interest, however, is that most people do not feel that these changes at the top are likely to affect the lives of Russian citizens directly at all.  And, in fact, we have to remember that most of these changes Putin has made are actually perceived very differently, quite neutrally in Russia.  The debate is all here.  It's not in Moscow at the public level.  And even those who are the most critical of Putin have to, are forced to acknowledge that he's still very popular because of his authoritarian instincts, not in spite of them.  And he still hasn't clamped down on the personal lives or ordinary Russians.  And even with the exception of some very noticeable cases like Annapolit Koskive, it's where there is a very clear step to not just intimidate them but do much worse things to them.  Many intellectuals and very hard charging reporters are still finding that they can speak out.  Their question, of course, is for how much longer.

And another issue is I was also in St. Petersburg.  And many people there feel that they actually have a lot of freedom to say what they want, as well as to publish what they want.  And some people remark, quite ironically, that now Putin and all the other St. Petersburg crowd have moved to Moscow.  It's a much freer place in St. Petersburg itself.  So it's become the center of criticism against the center of the state.  And none of the people I spoke to there feared any kind of arrest or dismissal over anything that they were saying.

Another point on the governance issue is that the people felt that what Putin was trying to do with this new move to appoint governors directly rather than to simply try to manipulate the actions as they've done in the past was that he was trying to replicate the sort of trust in the political realm that he already has in the economic level, economic realm.  And he's still proceeding with a lot of the economic reforms in part because he trusts the economic team around him.  And so one of the feelings was that this is the best case scenario, that he's trying to replicate that level of trust by appointing people he knows directly to the regions in the hope that that will increase the effectiveness of Russian governance.  So Putin is, in a sense, trying to follow kind of a Chinese model of having it both ways moving in a more authoritarian political direction while at the same time still trying to open up to market forces at home and abroad.  Of course, we all know from history that economic and political freedom are inextricably linked which makes it unlikely that he will be able to prevail on this over the longer term.

And also the appointment of governors to the regions just throws into question the whole idea of Russia as a federal state.  And as we have just been discussing, Russia is still a very diverse state.  It's not just a homogenous unitarian or unitary entity.  There will still have to be some discussion of how to divulge some kind of power-sharing to the local level if Russia is to survive as a federal state and to move forward given its past diversity.  And if Putin does, indeed, at some point violate the Russian constitution by creating some kind of maximum autonomy for Chechnya, then, of course, eventually after a period of time, all the old questions about authority to the other regions will come back as, indeed, they did in the early 1990s.

Now, just some final points on this issue of governance.  All the western commentary has been using phrases like Putin consolidates power, Putin centralizes power, Putin gathers in the reins of power.  I feel that we may be wrong here because I think that what we've just seen is not about power and strength but about weakness.  What I really sort of felt in looking at this is that it was not just about careful design and purpose, although he probably had a plan, as I said in an envelope in his drawer already ready, but it's more about aimless and desperation in the wake of Beslan.  What appears to be too much control is really a response to a sense of growing loss of control.  And if you look very carefully at Putin's recent speeches, I think you can see this.  Because there's almost an obsession with the idea of unity that he's talking about.  And that he's talking about almost a reference back to the immediate after effect of the Nazi invasion in World War II when the whole country had to gather together to mobilize against an enemy.  And he's trying again to sort of pull everybody together in a sort of a sense of unity.

And this goes back to the very beginning of his presidency.  He had a sort of a trinity of goals, one of which was unity, udinstri [ph.], and that's, of course, reference also to the political party of the same name that he put together as the party of power.  His second was gosadowinsto [ph.], statehood, the strengthening of the state.  And his third goal was the slogan of his regime, which has been effecteeveness [ph.], efficiency or effectiveness of governance.  And this was something we heard multiple times during his presentation, these three words came out repeatedly, especially the idea of effectiveness.  But the first goal of udinstri, unity, I think was an absolute precondition for the other two.  Because this is a negation of the, of his biggest fear, which is collapse, dissolution, disintegration.  He keeps referring to raspad [ph.], rasvowel [ph.], and these are all the words that suggest this.

And throughout the whole period of Putin's Presidency so far, he's always been very constrained in what he's done by trying to prevent any threats to unity, any potential threats to unity of the state, to the unity of government, the unity of society and the party around him.  And for a while that's sort of receded into the background over the last few years while Russia has been flush with almany [ph.] and modernization, reforms have been preceding ahead.  And now Beslan has brought this all back again.  He's, again, back to where he was when he first came into power, talking about these fears of raspad, rasvowel, collapse, disintegration.  And where he thinks that udinstri, unity is threatened, and so now he's not going to have any time to tackle these issues of statehood, of strengthening the state, and especially his favorite thing of increasing efficiency and effectiveness, moving Kozard to the side.  He moved one person from one of your key reforms down to tackle something else, shows that you're, you're getting really rather desperate.

And what I think we'll see is that these new administrative and anti-federal reforms will severely overtax his limited fiscal and most importantly personnel resources.  And we think Russia has got an awful lot of money right now, but there are limits to how much that they can use the surplus from [inaudible].  But the personal resources is even more limited.  And I fear what we're going to see is a hollow, watered down state rather than a strong one as a result of this, these governance changes.  And the ideas that he has of improving efficiency and economy or further efficiency and economy in the bureaucratic apparatus will have to be abandoned.

The image that I sort of see this is that Putin is sort of trying to work a light switch.  That he's hoping will bring the light at the other end.  But unfortunately the mice have eaten all of the connecting wires away.  And he's trying to sort of put them all back together again.  But unfortunately, he doesn't have all that it takes.  And when he's talking about the disintegration of the state, he's not necessarily talking about pieces dropping off like Chechnya or any of the other North Caucasus Republic, he's talking about disintegration from within, the rotting of the state from corruption.  And it's corruption that has most got him excised.  And as I said that we, mentioning before the complete corruption of the Interior Ministry, of all the different aspects of the state, he's trying to tackle this by putting people in he trusts, who he thinks can combat this.  But he's only got a handful of people.  And once he's appointed his regional governors to the 89 regions, well, does he even have enough for 89?  And who does he have after that?

And then I think that Putin is feeling increasingly beleaguered in many respects of the course, because he's created a set for himself of an extraordinary narrow pyramid with just him and Popsekev [ph.] and Vitronof [ph.] and a handful of other people at the top that he can rely on.  And beneath it's all just an abyss.  That's a rather pessimistic view, but I feel quite pessimistic actually having just come off the plane.  So that's it.

MR. ARON:  Thanks so much, Fiona.

I think we have time for about 15 minutes worth of questions.  So let's start.  That hand went first.  Yes?

MR. JONES:  Yes.  Bill Jones from Executive Intelligence Review.  I would just like to ask Fiona or Nikolas who were at the meeting with President Putin a little more detail on what he said.  Because it does seem that the statement that he made after Beslan indicated a strategic shift.  And the comments that he made about foreign powers involvement also send, I think, a few messages in various parts of both the U.S. and Great Britain regarding some of the operations that have been conducted in terms of a destabilization in the area.  It was said, some of the people who were at the meeting commented that Putin was more explicit in terms of incidents where foreign special lots of forces were collaborating with people that they considered terrorists.  And when this was brought to the attention of the foreign government, this was corrected.  But nevertheless part, I think the major aspect of what Putin had said, and I want to know if he elaborated more on this, was the, the idea that we are together in a war on terror, but to the extent that the U.S. or others do not see the war on terror in the same light as the threat against Russia and trying to use it against us, then, then that game is off and we're going to act in terms of our own national security interests?

MR. ARON:  Thanks, thanks very much.  I would like to ask people to ask questions very briefly as we have a lot of, probably, people wanting to ask.  And the responders, as well, as brief as possible.  Fiona or Nick, both?

MR. GVOSDEV:  He didn't really go into any details in terms of revealing specific incidents.  His main point was that he felt that foreign services were maintaining contacts with Chechen terrorist and separatist groups and that this was not the actions he had hoped of partners.  And that he felt he was getting the runaround in explanations about why these contacts were taking place.  But the overall context was still within this notion of partnership with the west, with other countries.  But eluding to this notion of double standards on what constitutes terrorism an what constitutes separatism and the like.

So some of the reporting I think that initially came out sort of over-emphasized antagonism towards the west where it was much more designed, I think, to convey a message of we all need to be good partners with each other and recognize each others' enemies as, as our own.  This idea that if it's an enemy to Russia, it should be an enemy to the U.S. and to Britain, to Israel, to India, and so on.  So--

MR. ARON:  Yes.

MS. HILL:  Yeah.  I just thought of that.  I mean, Nick's right because Putin was very careful in the meeting.  In fact, when he was actually pressed directly did he mean this was western government policy to somehow subvert Russia through exporting of terrorism, for example, he said he did not say that it was a western government policy.  But he was very clear in that context that he was being critical of western intelligence services.  And in the course of other meetings that I heard, particularly these people from military intelligence, they said that he was particularly excised because the FSB hasn't been able to collect this kind of intelligence, been able to collect this kind of intelligence because they've lost the capacity to infiltrate.  So he's particularly annoyed that western intelligence services are collecting this information.  This is sort of a professional irritation that he had as much as anything else.  However, it is also very clear because of all of the statements, the noise that's been coming out of Russia in general from other speakers we heard at the conference we attended of the people accusing the U.S. of exporting terrorism to Russia by creating Iraq as the single front of the war on terror.  That this was deliberately done so that Russia and other countries around Iraq would suffer from problems.

I mean, it's very clear that a lot of people are trying to deflect from Russia's own problems and deficiencies by apportioning blame elsewhere.  We're going to have to deal with that.  But Putin did, himself, say that he was somewhat pleased with the level of the cooperation that he's had at least with the United States on the war on terrorism.  But, again, the noise around him, you know, suggests that this is also again meant to sent a whole number of signals of internally as well as externally about Russia's current predicament.

MR. ARON:  Thanks.  Please, thanks for being so patient.

MS. KELLERMAN:  Michelle Kellerman [ph.] with National Public Radio.  I wanted to ask about U.S. leverage in Russia or perhaps lack thereof.  And I'll ask it this way.  Which administration officials when they first came criticized the Clinton folks for over personalizing relations with Russia?  And I wonder if you think the U.S. has made the same mistake?

MR. ARON:  Well, it's a big and open target.  Anybody wants to shoot first?

MR. GVOSDEV:  On the leverage question I think that we have to recognize that [inaudible] is relatively limited especially with oil prices the way they are now, with the ability of Russian companies to finance their own operations.  Russia does not have large debts that it needs aid for.  It doesn't need food aid or things of this sort.  Even in the aftermath of Beslan, Fiona and I were at meetings where people said, we don't even really need a lot of this medical aid from the west.  We're just accepting it for good public relations.  So in the sense that the U.S. has some kind of magic lever that it can threaten to turn the tap off, increasingly I think that that's not working.  And I think that the impression I got from the meeting with Putin and with others is that this sort of, they're willingness to accept advice from the west, from western leaders is immediately diminished.  Every time a political freedom issue question was raised with Putin, he immediately had a rejoinder about problems in the west.  He says, well, you, you know, you have problems with freedom of the media and with conglomerates controlling too many stations and radio programs.  Or you have problems with elections and so on.  So that there's very much this sense of almost a prickliness about the direct use of criticism.

I think, and Fiona you may have a different impression or similar, I think that maybe where leverage would be useful is if it's coupled with practical, technical assistance, that is in terms of intelligence sharing, working to improve border control which was an issue we kept hearing about, about Russia's relatively undefended borders to the south.  And in contrast how the U.S./Mexico border is a paragon of a secure border compared to Russia's borders with its former, former Soviet Republics.  And it seemed that that might be the direction which is in the context of actual practical assistance there could be leverage.  But there's very much the sort of water off duck's back approach now.  When they're just--every time they hear criticism from the west, it's now shrug it off and we're not going to pay attention to it.

MS. HILL:  Just one little comment on this, Michelle.  I mean, I actually felt that there might be some back door possibilities on this precisely because there is a sort of a vacuum in thinking, especially on the North Caucasus more broadly and on all of these issues like border controls.  And frankly just this year issues of dealing with the response to terrorist acts.  That if we were quiet about it, there might actually be some ways in by using some of these practical steps as a way of kind of pushing out a broader dialogue.

There are many people outside of the Kremlin who are on various advisory groups who are trying to filter ideas in now.  They need an opening to get in.  But, again, there's sort of a feeling that, you know, if there's no other plan out there, maybe they can get someone to pay attention to something that they're pushing, there's a whole group of people now working on a variety of issues.  One other interesting thing that came out was Putin's less enthusiastic for the first time acknowledging Northern Ireland--

[Technical interruption.]

MS. HILL:  --he did this in a slightly awkward way.  He moved certain [inaudible] up, but he would never want to deal with the terrorists.  But, of course, we know that under Margaret Thatcher the terrorists continued because she wouldn't, in fact, deal with them.  Although there were behind the scenes discussions.  I actually thought this might be a time for someone in Britain to sort of quietly go and talk to Mr. Putin about how Northern Ireland actually did get resolved in the end.  But it was done through an extraordinarily long, drawn out process and very complicated means.  And I'm not sure whether Russia might be in a state to listen to this right now, but--

MR. ARON:  With direct American participation?

MS. HILL:  Yeah.  This wouldn't obviously involve direct American participation.  There might be, as he actually acknowledged, that it would actually maybe a valid reference point.  And this was where he rejected the issue of independence.  He actually said, well, yes, this is actually a good model because in the case of Northern Ireland nobody ever forced Britain to aced to a succession of Northern Ireland.  Actually, that's not strictly true.  But at the same time, the fact that he has acknowledged this now, and many of the other things that he actually said in this meeting, that's why I wrote that piece.  There were some actually some points in that if you tried to pin him down on them, that we might be able to use these to sort of get around the edges.  But we couldn't do it openly because of this reaction unfortunately to, as Nick has outlined, to the sort of perceptions of criticism without any kind of responses.  But it won't be easy to do that.

MR. ARON:  [Inaudible.]

MR.          :  I think we should encourage Mr. Putin to learn more about Northern Ireland because that show how that you can be a strong leader like Lady Thatcher, may she live forever, and still sign the Anglo/Irish Agreement which led the way to the subsequent Good Friday Agreement which has ended terrorism.  So there's no contradiction between the two.

But I fear that the almost unquestioned support that the United States has given to Mr. Putin over his, over the Russian/Chechnya policy is going to harm America's larger problem with the Moslem insurgency and Islamic terrorism.  Because it seems to me that in order to out manoeuver al Qaeda politically, we have to convince moderate Moslems around the world that we're not anti-Moslem, that we are not in league with another nation, a Christian nation as they see it, which is trying to do down Moslems.  That, in other words, we should be doing more things like Kosovo where the west defended Moslems because they were, they were in a weak position on the grounds of universal human rights and so on.  Whereas, if we support Mr. Putin over a territorial issue which he, himself, now says was a misstep and a mistake to start back in Yeltsin's time, another few years and maybe he'll admit that his own war in Chechnya was a mistake where we are, we are pushing ourselves into a corner of his making.

MR.          :  I just wanted to ask in this meeting with Putin, did anyone ask him, was he willing to end the war against Chechnya in order to carry out the war against terrorism, which is to say what Radek has said.  You know, was he willing to admit that his own policies have been terrible for both Chechnya and Russia?

MR. GVOSDEV:  Well, I mean, his main points were that he was handed a bad situation from the previous administration and that he is, he is trying to carry out policies of improvement.  He kept stressing this notion when he--this was interesting about the Northern Ireland example, because he said, well, we've already had amnesty. We're already reaching out to, to bring in "moderate" forces into the system.  And I think that his perception is, and this was also emphasized by others at these other meetings, is that the crisis in Beslan took place in part because of this is what you'll hear from some in Moscow, that because the situation in Chechnya is "normalizing," and they'll strut out so many statistics, so many schools have been opened, so many hospitals have been opened, that the attacks in Beslan were, in fact, a desperation strike.  And Putin sort of even criticizes, he says there's not even a war in Chechnya.  It was asked, and he said, well, you can't call it a war.  It's simply that raids are taking place and there are terrorist acts taking place, but it's not a war.  That was part of what he said.  And that this notion that--and again using the polling data and others, he's very firm in his belief that a majority of Chechens want a settlement which leave Chechnya within the Russian Federation.  And that all that he needs to keep doing is holding out long enough for the silent Chechen majority, as it were, to, you know, be able to come to power in the republic.

And other people we talked to were even more explicit.  And, in fact, they were drawing some comparisons with Iraq and said that, you know, you just have to defeat insurgencies over time by wearing them down.  And that the policy in Chechnya is to move as much as possible through all Chechen units who know the territory, who know where people are hiding.  And that, you know, at first half of that force will desert or defect, and then you keep re-recruiting, and then a quarter of that force may defect, and then an eighth of it may defect.  And then five, ten years down the road you'll have completely reliable local units that will do the job.  And it's very much this notion of we're committed--this is my impression and you may have a different one, but I very much had the sense of, you know, it's like being on the rollercoaster, you're stuck on it.  There's no way to step off.  You have to just simply go through this process for the next few years.  And to step off the rollercoaster now is not going to happen.  So mistakes were made is the mind of the past, but we're committed now is what you hear from Putin and people around him that they have no choice but to see this through.  And that means a total defeat of the insurgents and terrorists.

MR. ARON:  Fiona?

MS. HILL:  Just one quick comment.  Because this ties right back to Michelle Kellerman's question about leverage.  Unfortunately, the U.S. has made it quite difficult for itself in being able to talk to Russia about this.  And what disturbed me the most was how he was constantly throwing back what the U.S. has been doing elsewhere in response to just these precisely these types of questions.  In the valdai [ph.], the discussion beforehand he said to somebody, so why does Russia have to be just as bad as the U.S. or worse than the U.S. then?  I mean, don't you want to be sort of doing something on your own instead of constantly referring back to what the U.S. has done here and there?  Because, of course, when he was asked about criminal acts that Russian forces have perpetrated in Chechnya and Abugrave, he said, well, look, doesn't this happen everywhere?  As you can see, kind of in war time situations nasty things happen.  People do terrible things.  Of course, we're going to deal with our criminal acts.  One, he was referring, he and others were referring to this sort of problem of Chechnization and the difficulty of carrying this out, again, referring back to insurgency in Iraq.

Which is why I certainly feel that other countries here, other interlopers could play a role.  Britain, I mean, I got a very strong sense that there might be an opening that Radek has suggested.  I'm not sure that we should send Margaret Thatcher.  She's not been very well lately.  But certainly people from around her could put a thing forward.  Another interesting development was, as we were waiting for the meeting with Putin to begin, the Russian TV had been showing his meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan.  Someone told me that King Abdullah has been to Russia about 15 times over the last year or so.  The Chechen desaspro [ph.] in Jordan is very strong.  It's about 100,000.  The head of the Chechen desaspro there is linked to Kadir's [ph.].  There are a number of Russians going backwards and forwards to Jordan.  King Abdullah, of course, is quite weak.  But it's kind of clear that there could be a role played there by trying to, again, mediate or mitigate some of this.  So I think what we need now is some creative approaches and responses that not necessarily need the U.S. to take a lead here.  We have very limited leverage because of the large international environment, the ability of the Russian's to push back, you know, completely unrelated issues but, you know, kind of obviously are things that they can refer to because they don't want to be directly criticized.  But it doesn't mean that we can't kind of chip away at things behind the scenes and be creative about finding other ways into this problem.  Because this is going to be a problem that faces all of us too, especially as a propensity for spill over from the North Caucasus into the South Caucasus is something that we should be very concerned about.  And Putin is clearly having--he was, he was very blatant about his double standard towards Georgia in this meeting referring openly to the South Ossetian and Uphasian aspirations for something different.  While at the same time, of course, stressing that Chechnya and Russian territory integrity should be recognized.  Assuming, again, this is another thing, North Caucasus, Chechnya, all have to be dealt with in a broader regional context.  And this is what a lot of people inside of Russia itself are realizing and many people outside.

Which, again, comes back to what Vladimir was saying about the European Union.  The European Union has a dialogue with Russia right now.  It has a new neighborhood policy which is including the South Caucasus.  Russia is in the midst of negotiations with the European Union about visas and transit.  That raises the questions of passports and citizenship for people in entities of other states.  There are a lot of ways in which we can raise this issue and to talk to the Russians about this, engage in a serious dialogue without simply hammering away at the same old themes that we have been doing before.  We just have to be more creative, I think.

MR. ARON:  Please.  Thank you for being patient.  I'm afraid that's the last question that we're going to entertain.

MR.          :  Paul [inaudible] of the Atlantic Monthly and the National Journal.  I wonder if it's not possible [inaudible] a little more sympathetic of the Russian mission in certain respects [inaudible] Vladimir talk.  I mean, given that they're paranoid and have enemies.  And--

MR.          :  Right.

MR.          :  If you want to talk about Georgia, for example, [inaudible] the notion that what the United States should [inaudible] in Georgia [inaudible].  And we should kind of bolster western presence here.  Let's remember that Georgia, too, is a country with a new president [inaudible].  [Inaudible.]

MR.          :  The debate over Russian sympathy depends on how one defines the term sympathy.  I prefer to speak about the concrete aspects of the U.S. policy.  Training and equipping those four battalions has a clear anti-terrorist rationale, which Mr. Putin accepted, however grudgingly, two years ago.  The Pakisey [ph.] problem was certifiably resolved back in September 2002.  We should not accept Mr. Putin's moves against Georgia today based on the situation that was resolved two years ago thanks to U.S. support.  I don't see why the presence of Ukrainian and Romanian contingent in Baghdad to protect the UN mission would be an irritant to Mr. Putin.  I can't, for the life of me, see why that should be the case.  On the other hand, there should be no room for sympathy, if that's the word, for the destruction of the international [inaudible] in the ways in which are described.  Georgia is the first target in the use of this modus operandi.  And precedent set in Georgia could well be followed elsewhere.  Think of Crimean [ph.], think of Northern Cassacstan [ph.], think of Trasnestria [ph.].  There is no substitute for upholding international law in the North Caucasus.  And there is also no substitute for an American policy that would uphold U.S. or EuroAtlantic strategic interest in that region in terms of the two directional transit through the [inaudible] Georgian corridor.  That is of vital importance to the west and I see no reason why the west should not uphold its own interests there.

MR. ARON:  Yeah.  Would you like to add to--

MR.         :  Just two quick things.

MR. ARON:  Okay.

MR.          :  Just so that it goes on the record as well, it was interesting when Putin was asked about Georgia he did say, and this of course shows that there can be differences between what the President says and what other interested parties in the Russian Federation do, but that he stood for a, a--as he was asked about the separatist enclaves, that we must find a modus vivendi for them to co-exist within a Georgian framework.  So at least in our group he rejected this notion of creeping annexation of the Russian Federation.  But, again, what can be said in a Presidential meeting and what can be done on the ground are two different things.  But it was interesting that he did come out explicitly and say that.

With regard to EuroAtlantic interests in the region and elsewhere, again, the question of double standards from some of the other meetings, people said your great interest in preserving the territorial integrity of Georgia doesn't seem to extend to preserving the territorial integrity of Cyprus or Serbia with regard to Kosovo or the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus.  So that, again, this notion of every time we have a point that we raise, the fact that there are what are perceived to be double standards in the west I think complicates the dialogue on these, on settling a number of these territorial issues.  Because every time we raise something about Uphasia, Ossetia, [inaudible], there were comments in response about other disputed areas.  And I think that, again, as Fiona said, moving away from the sort of the arguing across the table in favor of these kind of concrete solutions is perhaps the way to move this forward.

MR.          :  Dan, to leave you yet with yet another layer of complexity, responding to Paul's and Vladimir's exchange, there is a right to self-determination which is a double-edged sword.  Meaning that if we are in favor of self-determination for the Chechens, should we not by the same token be in favor of self-determination for the Uphase and the South Ossetians, the majority of the population of whom do not want to be in Georgia.  So--

MR.         :  They are a minority in [inaudible].

MR.         :  Who?

MR.         :  [Inaudible.]

MR.         :  Of course.  Georgians form 45 percent of the region of Uphasia.

MR.         :  Right.

MR.         :  And the Uphasians are 10 percent.

MR.         :  Correct.

MR.         :  Prior to the 1993 ethnic cleansing.

MR.         :  Correct.  Correct.  But the point is that this is, this is yet another level of, it's another pinch of spice in the cauldron that recall the North Caucasus and the South Caucasus and, of course, where unfortunately Chechnya is situated.  So--

[Technical interruption.]

MR.          :  --for an excellent presentation.

[Applause.]