Russia to Allow Inspectors in Chechnya

Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov sought Friday to blunt U.S. and European condemnation of Moscow’s brutal war in Chechnya, promising a thorough investigation of charges of human rights abuses--although he angrily insisted that his government has done nothing wrong.

In a meeting with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and ranking officials of the European Union, Ivanov said Russia will permit independent international organizations, journalists and aid groups to visit the war zone, including the notorious camps where Chechens are interrogated about possible ties to the rebels in the separatist republic.

Albright said the steps that Ivanov promised could ease one of the most serious causes of friction between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War.

“We don’t mince words on this subject, and our differences are deep,” Albright said after the high-level talks. Although Russian leaders regularly confer separately with U.S. and European diplomats, Friday’s talks were the first formal three-way meeting among the foreign ministers.

Albright and Foreign Minister Jaime Gama of Portugal, which now holds the rotating EU presidency, said Ivanov promised to allow inspections by ranking delegations from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the U.N. refugee agency.

Gama said Ivanov’s promises don’t end divisions over Chechnya, “but we certainly are at a point where things begin to take off.”

Albright said it is time to get to the bottom of “credible reports of atrocities and human rights abuses.” But Ivanov said criticism of Moscow was based on “false information . . . twisted information.”

He said journalists are welcome to cover the war--except those who break Russia’s “accreditation rules.”

“In any state, there are accreditation rules,” he said. “If you play by the rules, you stay there; if not, you have to go somewhere else.”

In response to one reporter’s question about journalists’ access, Ivanov demanded to know the name of a single reporter who had been turned away. When a representative of a French newspaper supplied a name, Ivanov snapped that the newspaper’s accounts showed “a lack of balanced and accurate information.”

Albright and Chris Patten, the EU’s commissioner for external affairs, also said it is important for Russia to give humanitarian organizations a chance to work in Chechnya, both to alleviate war-related hardship and to keep an eye out for human rights abuses.

“We do have available a good deal of humanitarian assistance that we would like to . . . deliver in the region as rapidly as possible, but we need to be assured that the circumstances exist for delivery of that assistance,” Patten said. “I hope that Mr. Ivanov and his colleagues . . . will be able to give us those assurances.”