World

Moscow: War, What War?

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

November 15, 1999 / 8:14 AM EST / CBS

As Russian forces tightened their noose on ChechnyaÂ's capital Wednesday, U.S. officials warned that President Clinton intends to repeat Western criticism of MoscowÂ's military campaign and press President Boris Yeltsin to seek a political solution when the two meet in Istanbul on Thursday.

Mr. Clinton will repeat comments he made to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Oslo earlier this month, warning that Russia's military offensive threatens to cause mounting civilian casualties and to undermine world opinion of Russia.

Â"Undoubtedly we are going to be talking about Chechnya. He's going to be making the same points as he made to Putin in Oslo,Â" U.S. National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer told reporters. He was with the Clinton family visiting the ancient site of Ephesus on Turkey's Aegean coast.

Meanwhile, Russian troops continued pressing toward Grozny, Wednesday, though commanders have stressed that they will rely on air and artillery strikes rather than storming to conquer Chechnya's towns.

On Tuesday, troops moved to within nearly a mile of the town of Achkhoi-Martan, 15 miles southwest of the Grozny, and surrounded Argun, nine miles east of the capital.

Mr. Clinton and Yeltsin are to hold talks at a summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is being held in Istanbul on November 18-19.

A U.S. official said the OSCE was not expected to make a formal statement on Chechnya, but officials said earlier that Mr. Clinton would try to rally international support for the U.S. position.

The official said there were limits to the pressure Washington could put on Moscow because punitive measures would be counter to U.S. aims of encouraging democracy and bolstering Russia's economy. Â"We don't have much leverage,Â" the official said.

In Moscow on Tuesday, a Russian government spokesman told reporters that the European security summit should focus on wider European and global security issues and not on the crisis in Chechnya.

Before leaving for the summit on Wednesday, Yeltsin said he would use his political weight to try to change Western attitudes to Russia's military offensive.

Â"I hope common sense will prevail with those who have not been ready for that so far,Â" Interfax news agency reported Yeltsin as saying.

Russian planes first began bombing Chechnya in August, after Islamic militants raided the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan and terrorists blew up four apartment buildings in Russia, killing 300 people.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin denied that Russia was at war in Chechnya.

Â"We have no war aims. There is no war in Chechnya,Â" said Putin, asked what Moscow's war aims were in an interview with the German weekly Die Zeit.

Â"There is an anti-terrorist operation going on. As you will not fail to notice, we are in no way attacking cities,Â" he said in the inerview released on Wednesday.