Russia Threatens Afghanistan
Russian officials Friday accused Afghanistan's ruling Taliban of training Chechen rebels and promised to take "adequate measures" to stop it.
Kremlin officials have warned the Taliban that Russia might attack Afghanistan. But they have been careful to rule out a repeat of the Soviet Union's disastrous war there.
"Russia has not been and cannot be indifferent. It will work with its partners on adequate measures which would liquidate any cases of aggressive sorties from Afghan territory," Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told a news conference.
He said Taliban support of "diverse terrorist organizations" did not go unnoticed in Moscow, but he added that Russia believed in solving problems in Afghanistan through U.N. negotiations.
Russia's main spokesman on the war in rebel Chechnya made a series of threats against the Taliban Monday, saying Russia might launch preventive air strikes on Afghanistan if Moscow found the Taliban was helping Chechen rebels.
Other officials, including Ivanov, later backed up the Chechnya spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembsky.
Russia said the United States had also become involved in the Afghan issue, saying Afghanistan was discussed at meetings between U.S. and Russian officials in Moscow this week.
"The two sides agreed that if Kandahar will as before ignore the opinion of the world community, then this could lead to the consideration by the U.N. Security Council of the need for further measures," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The United States bombed bases in Afghanistan in 1998 in the belief that they were being used by Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, accused by Washington of sponsoring terrorism.
The Russian statement also said the Taliban, whose spiritual capital is Kandahar, should hand over bin Laden.
Appearing on Friday's CBS News Early Show, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said the U.S. is, "concerned about the fact that the war in Chechnya might spread beyond the boundaries of Chechnya…That would be something that would not work, I think, for the rest of the international community."
Albright said she discussed it in a meeting with Ivanov this week.
Col. Gen. Konstantin Totsky, the head of Russia's Border Guards, said Moscow was within its rights to attack Afghanistan, but warned the price would be destabilization in Central Asia.
"I would hate to see further Taliban action prompting these preemptive strikes," Totsky said. "And I am absolutely certain that they would sharply aggravate the situation on the border with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan."
Yastrzhembsky said Moscow had to avoid serious military involvement. "Relaunching anything like the (Soviet Union's) Afghan adventure is absolutely out of the question," he said.
The last Soviet troops withdrew in humiliation from Afghanistan in 1989 after 10 years of fighting guerrillas opposed to the Moscow-backed regime in Kabul.
The aliban, which controls much of Afghanistan but is recognized by only a handful of governments, has denied training the Chechen rebels.
It has warned Moscow that it will hold neighboring former Soviet Uzbekistan and Tajikistan responsible for any Russian military action against the territory it controls.
Moscow has vowed to protect the two countries, but they remain potentially vulnerable to extremist groups, which command some following among their overwhelmingly Muslim populations and are believed to cooperate with the Taliban.
"I think the Russians need to understand that the road that they're headed on with Chechnya is not going to lead to a solution, that there is no military solution to the problems in Chechnya," Albright said. "Not only the United States, but the other countries in Europe and numbers of others are urging them to find a political solution for the issue."
Although the rebels are outnumbered and outgunned, Russia has been unable to get the upper hand against them in the mountains, where the militants exploit their guerrilla skills.
Russia sent ground troops into Chechnya in September, following weeks of air strikes, after Chechnya-based Islamic militants invaded neighboring Dagestan in August. The rebels also are blamed in a series of apartment bombings in Russia that killed about 300 people in September.