GLOBE EDITORIAL
Russia's own warIT WOULD BE hard to imagine a more heartless crime than to take children hostage and threaten them with death if demands are not met. But this is what a group of 17 terrorists, presumably acting for the cause of Chechen independence, did yesterday morning at a Russian school in the region of North Ossetia. Although President Vladimir Putin came to power as a strongman waging a savage war in Chechnya, and though he continues to rely on that dirty war to justify his increasingly authoritarian rule, there can be no justification for Chechen retaliation that targets innocent children, parents, and teachers.
Responses to the hostage-taking must be of two kinds: for the short term, a painstaking effort to resolve the crisis without further harm to the hostages, and for the long term, a recognition that it is in the interest of Russians and Chechens to find a political solution of the horrific conflict in Chechnya. It is never easy to negotiate with terrorists, particularly when, as in the current siege, they have already killed innocent people. And since the siege at the school comes a day after a suicide bombing near a Moscow subway station and a week after two Russian airliners were blown apart by terrorist explosions, Putin's government may feel compelled to reject any negotiated concessions that might be construed as yielding to terrorist blackmail. Nonetheless, the first obligation of a government exercising popular sovereignty should be to protect the lives of its citizens. In 2002, when Russian security forces sought to rescue hostages by pumping lethal gas into a Moscow theater without having the proper antidotes at the site, they ended up killing 129 hostages and making the Kremlin look callous about Russian lives. Putin ought to be doing everything he can to avoid a repeat of the tragic denouement at the Moscow theater. Immediately after the hostage-taking, Putin vowed he would not deviate from his policy of refusing to negotiate with Chechen guerrillas. He said: "We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons, and destroy them." This is obligatory rhetoric. Similarly, President Bush was offering an unavoidable gesture of solidarity when he assured Putin in a telephone call that the United States stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Russia in the fight against terrorism. And it is equally fitting that the UN Security Council condemns the hostage-taking in Russia, as Putin asked it to do. But there could be face-saving ways for Putin to permit negotiations with the hostage takers. They have requested dialogue with local officials -- the presidents of North Ossetia and the neighhboring region of Ingushetia. They have also asked to talk to a well-known pediatrician, Leonid Roshal, who came to the aid of hostages held in the Moscow theater in 2002. Putin could allow these figures, acting independently of the Kremlin, to work out a resolution that saves the lives of the hostages.
Whatever the outcome of the current siege, the day must come when Putin owns up to the need for a political resolution of the conflict in Chechnya. Toward that end, he should recognize that the legitimately elected Chechen government of Aslan Maskhadov -- currently a fugitive -- has forcefully denounced the hostage-taking in North Ossetia. Putin should seek a political solution in Chechnya not in response to terrorism but for the sake of justice for Russians as well as Chechens. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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