Word: chechnya
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While the Kremlin gave no immediate response, Deputies in the Duma, or lower house of parliament, blasted the initial government decision to send troops to Chechnya. "The country is in crisis," said one, reformer Boris Fyodorov, joining a unanimous call for a special commission to probe the war. Still, the Deputies rejected a limit on President BorisYeltsin's power to run the military offensive, and -- in a slap at widely criticized Defense Minister Pavel Grachev -- ordered the army's general staff to report directly to Yeltsin...
...Washington, where support for Yeltsin has gradually given way to worry over the war's brutality, the State Department for the first time openly criticized the Yeltsin government, saying the military offensive in Chechnya violated the 1975 Helsinki accord and agreements reached last year by the 52-nation Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe. In the Senate, new Foreign Relations Committee chairman Republican Jesse Helms of North Carolina warned he would push to end U.S. aid to Russia if Yeltsin "can't control his people -- in terms of killing women, children and other innocent people...
Despite guarded U.S. support for Yeltsin's right to put down the Chechnya rebellion,TIME State Department correspondent J.F.O. McAllisterreports that "subterranean turmoil" over how to handle the Russian leader is now festering in the Clinton Administration's ranks. At State, he says, several officials argued unsuccessfully for cancellation of a scheduled meeting in Geneva next week between Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev to discuss the future of NATO. McAllister says: "Here's a government (Russia) that's committing fairly substantial human rights abuses, and that's not something that Christopher can easily ignore...
Finally, last week Yeltsin reappeared to serve as chairman of a meeting of the Russian Security Council, the top-level Kremlin committee of defense and intelligence officials, and to deliver a nationally televised speech on Chechnya. He looked fit -- so sleek, in fact, that some viewers suspected he had had his whole face retouched, not just his nose...
True to form, Yeltsin stepped offstage three weeks ago -- into the Kremlin hospital for repair of a deviated septum -- at the same time that he ordered the Russian armed forces to seize control in Chechnya and disarm the supporters of its defiant president, Jokhar Dudayev. The disappearance of Yeltsin and his failure to explain the decision to use force began a new round of speculation about his health and his competence to handle his job. Though U.S. Vice President Al Gore visited him and reported that he was fine, the rumors continued...