Word: chechnya
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...just as clearly campaigning for the June 16 presidential elections, though he has yet to declare his candidacy. But even if he staged the event as a political-image make-over, Yeltsin had good reason to be angry. For the second time in eight months, guerrillas from rebellious Chechnya had carried out a terrorist raid on a civilian hospital. This time the attack was in Kizlyar, a town in Dagestan, a multiethnic republic in the Russian Federation three miles from the Chechen border. After killing 25 local residents and policemen and holding more than 3,000 terrified civilians...
Even if that quiets the immediate discontent, however, Chechnya is Yeltsin's weak point, and his challengers sense it. Lebed criticized the Kremlin's handling of the hostage crisis and warned that "there was no guarantee it won't happen again." In his declaration speech Zhirinovsky demanded, "End the war in the Caucasus! If you don't burn the rebels' bases with napalm, then you, Boris Nikolayevich, will lose the election on June 16, and I will do it on July 1!" Though crude, the threat contained a simple truth: the war in Chechnya mars any Yeltsin-image makeover, however...
...bold reprise of the bloody raid on a Russian hospital in Budyonnovsk last June, hundreds of Chechen rebels seized a hospital in another Russian town, Kizlyar, taking more than 3,000 hostages and killing dozens more in the process. Demanding the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Chechnya, the rebels then took 165 hostages with them in an attempted escape to Chechnya. En route, however, Russian forces fired upon the rebels, who quickly captured a border village, creating a tense standoff half a mile from Chechnya...
...demolition of Pervomayskaya may still spark a larger conflict. TIME's Yuri Zarakhovich reports that many in the autonomous republic of Dagestan are seething over what they see as the Russian government's willingness to risk the lives of Dagestani hostages to destroy the invading rebels. "Not unlike neighboring Chechnya, there are caches of weapons in every house here, and all the people are as volatile. Enmity towards Moscow is visibly growing. If Dagestan should ever rise against Moscow and traditional ethnic rivalries flare up with a renewed force, the ongoing Chechen war may seem just like the spark...
...Turkish ferry hijacked by Chechen sympathizers continues to steam towards Istanbul, Turkish officials appear close to resolving the crisis. The hijackers have offered to release all hostages in Istanbul in return for a Friday news conference to publicize the plight of Chechnya. Turkish officials, who say that they will not let a ship that the hijackers say is packed with explosives sail through the crowded Bosporus straits to Istanbul, have offered the port city of Eregli as an alternative site. While this hostage crisis seems headed to a peaceful end, TIME's James Wilde says that its effects will...