Russian Premier Shrugs Off U.S., Defends Chechnya Attacks

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin on Tuesday rejected strong U.S. criticism that the Kremlin’s war in Chechnya violates the Geneva Conventions, insisting that Russia’s tough military action is proportionate to the threat it faces.

With support in Russia for the war in the separatist republic remaining high, Russian officials appear determined to face down the growing barrage of international criticism.

“We are dealing with well-organized gangs of international terrorists,” Putin said after meeting Tuesday with bereaved families of Russian soldiers killed in the offensive. “We are dealing with groups which are well-armed and trained and financed from abroad.”

He said the Chechen forces will continue to attack Russia unless they are crushed.

The first sign of serious criticism of the war by the opposition emerged Tuesday, when the leader of the liberal Yabloko party, Grigory A. Yavlinsky, called for a halt to the bombing and for negotiations with Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov.

Russia has been under increasing pressure from Western countries over the high civilian casualties caused by its massive bombing campaign against Chechen villages and towns.

The strongest U.S. criticism came Monday when State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said Russia’s indiscriminate use of military force was not in keeping with rules on the conduct of warfare in the Geneva Conventions.

Kremlin spokesman Igor V. Shabdurasulov brushed aside Rubin’s comments Tuesday, saying that Chechnya is an internal Russian affair. He noted that Russia plans no remarks on its actions in Chechnya at an upcoming summit in Istanbul, Turkey, of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The Nov. 18-19 summit is emerging as the focus for the international community’s efforts to press Moscow to negotiate an end to the conflict.

Despite Russia’s rejection of the U.S. pressure, President Clinton said Tuesday that his administration will continue to urge Russia to minimize civilian casualties and find a way to negotiate.

“I think that in the end there will have to be a political solution,” he said. “And I hope that the end will come sooner rather than later so fewer people will die.”

Russian troops, which met defeat in the 1994-96 Chechen war, pushed back into the southern republic in early October after Moscow blamed guerrillas there for raids on nearby Dagestan and bombings of several Russian apartment buildings that killed more than 300 people.

Russia claims that hundreds of mercenaries are flooding into Chechnya to support the guerrillas there. Tightening a blockade of Chechnya, Putin on Tuesday banned flights from six southern Russian cities to a dozen countries, most of them Muslim.

In Chechnya, subfreezing temperatures were predicted overnight, complicating Russia’s advance and making life tougher for thousands of Chechen refugees in neighboring Ingushetia. About 20,000 of the 200,000 refugees in Ingushetia are living in tents or rail cars, and thousands more arrive each day.