Yeltsin Blamed in Caucasus Ethnic Strife

As they passed around photographs of charred and mutilated bodies of their brethren, leaders of the Ingush, a tiny nationality in southern Russia, blamed Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin on Thursday for the latest eruption of ethnic violence in the former Soviet Union.

“The horrible word genocide is a perfectly objective term to describe the tragedy facing our people,” Salman Mutaliyev, the deputy rector of Ingushetia’s Polytechnical Institute, said at a Moscow news conference.

The Ingush are an Islamic people who live on a tiny crescent of land in the Caucasus, a region of the former Soviet Union that has been cursed with several intractable violent ethnic conflicts over the last four years. Fighting that broke out two weeks ago between the Ingush and Ossetians in North Ossetia, which the Ingush say should belong in part to them, has been calmed by Russian troops sent there by Yeltsin.

But the Ingush say that the troops and emissaries Yeltsin sent to the region to try to settle the conflict--the worst to rock the Russian Federation this year--have been partial to the Ossetians. “The Ingush have been characterized as the aggressors--this is disinformation,” Mutaliyev said.

Akhmed-Khade Poshev, the Ingush’s spiritual leader, said Russian authorities--the Parliament and government officials--”deserve the punishment of God and man” for allowing the conflict to explode and that “Yeltsin (deserves it) more than all the others.”

The territory where the fighting has been concentrated is now part of North Ossetia but was Ingush land until the late Soviet dictator Josef Stalin deported the Ingush from the area as part of his brutal nationalities policy. When the Ingush were allowed to return several years later, the region remained part of North Ossetia.

Although the Ingush claim land in the area, there are about 400,000 Ossetians living in the Caucasus; their homelands were also divided by Stalin, between Russia and Georgia.

The Ossetians, who are mostly Orthodox Christians, have insisted that their territorial claims are as old and as valid as those of the Ingush. The Ossetians have asserted that the latest battling with the Ingush is representative of their foes’ “medieval” and “dangerous” tendency to try to resolve problems with arms.

The Ingush-Ossetian territorial dispute--which has threatened to spread and involve the neighboring Chechens--had been simmering for years. But the Soviet and then the Russian government has been too busy trying to stop bloodshed in other regions to prevent this conflict from growing violent.

Reports of the death toll vary widely. At Thursday’s news conference, the Ingush said “thousands” of their people have been killed; reports from the Russian government put the death toll at 256--about half Ingush and half Ossetian.

Although hundreds of hostages have been released by both sides, more than 150 hostages are still being kept by each side, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

The conflict could prove to be a test of Yeltsin’s ability to control ethnic violence. Although political and territorial disputes have flared into warfare in at least five former republics since the Soviet Union broke up late last year, Russia has not seen such fighting in its own territory during its 10 months as an independent country.

Yeltsin moved quickly to declare a state of emergency, deployed troops and sent some of his highest-ranking officials to the region.

On Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Shakhrai was appointed to head the provisional administration in the region. To try to restore normalcy, Yeltsin’s people have decided to return to their homes the thousands of refugees who fled the violence. But Ingush spokesmen said this is a ridiculous plan, because so many homes have been destroyed and looted since refugees abandoned them.