From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 11/29/2005 9:14 AM
November, 28, 2005

A.Zakaev: «War with terror is a war with own shadow»

Mr. Chairman,
Ladies and gentlemen,

I am the Deputy Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the official representative of the Chechen Republic’s President Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev, the successor to Aslan Maskhadov who was killed perfidiously 8 months ago by the Russian Secret Services, acting under the direct command of Russia’s top leadership.

I would like to start by thanking the organisers of this meeting.  Thank you most sincerely.

For more than ten years now I have been a direct participant in the military and political processes under way both within Chechnya itself, and – now – around Chechnya.  The little information that trickles through the filters set up by the propaganda departments of the Russian “strong-arm” ministries and agencies is intended to throw the observer off the scent.  Unfortunately, the Kremlin’s ideologists continue to give credence to the lamentably well-rehearsed idea that if you repeat a lie a thousand times, it will eventually become the truth.  I prefer a different, equally well-known truth: that you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but never all of the people all of the time.

Ladies and gentlemen, the present and future of any conflict are defined first and foremost by the nature of that conflict.  You have probably heard dozens of versions of the origins of the conflict between Russia and Chechnya.  Oil reserves and the machinations of international Islamic terrorism have less than anything else to do with how that conflict arose.  If I may, I would like very briefly to tell you what it is that the Russians are so afraid of, and what they are so keen to suppress that they have spent far more on it than even on the Sarcophagus they built around the Chernobyl nuclear power station.

For many years since the beginning of the Russian-Chechen war (December 10, 1994), any attempt of the world community to become involved in the peaceful solution of the conflict has been halted by the customary thesis of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation. Especially today when our conflict has degenerated into vicious circle it is extremely important to look at it from legal point of view. Epithets such as "self-declared", "separatist", "rebel" or "unrecognised" are frequently used to describe the Chechen Republic. They are not based on historical fact, and sound unnecessarily provocative.

From the legal standpoint, the sovereign status of the Chechen Republic is as legitimate as was the USSR, and now, the Russian Federation. In April 1990, in the spirit of Gorbachevґs reforms of the Soviet system, which aimed to liberalize the system, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted two laws, which were of paramount importance for the nations of the Soviet Union.

April 10th, 1990. "On the Basis of Economic Relations between the Union of the SSR and the Union of Autonomous Republics" April 26th, 1990 "On Dividing Authority between the Union of the SSR and Federation Subjects". Beside more general provisions, this legislation contained a number of articles, which radically changed the status of autonomous republics. The autonomous republics now shared the rights of the union republics. Both types of republics enjoyed the right to "free self-determination of the people". Autonomous and union republics were federation subjects and members of the Union of the SSR.

On the 27th November 1990, following an official edict (we could call it a “demand”) of the supreme organ of the USSR, the Supreme Soviet of the Chechen-Ingush Republic adopted a Declaration on State Sovereignty; this meant ceding from Russia.

Throughout the life of the USSR, anything to do with the legal status, “statehood” and borders of the various ethnic entities within the country was the exclusive prerogative of the supreme organ of the USSR.  An example: the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic was liquidated in 1944 and re-established in 1957 by the supreme Soviet of the USSR.  Another example: during the 1950s, the Crimean Autonomous Republic was taken away from Russia and handed to Ukraine, again by decision of the USSR Supreme Soviet.  It was also the USSR Supreme Soviet, which after the War assigned Koningsburg and several Japanese islands to become part of  Russia.

According to a logic that we Chechens find it hard to fathom, after the collapse of the Soviet Union the Russian authorities found it possible to revise only the Supreme Soviet decision which revived Chechen statehood.  There was no demand to have the Crimea return to Russia, and as for Koningsburg and the Kurile Islands, they are all clearly regarded as land which is an inherent part of Russia’s territory.

The reason why I am going into all this in such detail is so that you should understand that there was no uprising, no seizing of power by armed separatists.  As I have already said, the sovereignty of the Chechen Republic was dictated by the adoption in April 1990 in the USSR of several new laws, and was declared absolutely legitimate by Soviet law, Russian law and international law.

This shows that by the time the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, the Chechen Republic had existed for more than a year as a sovereign state, recognised in the legal system of the USSR, and as an equal to all the “Union Republics” (Russia, Georgia, and so on) it was preparing to sign the updated Union Treaty

Unambiguously equal status of the Chechen Republic was in fact recognised by the government of Russia in 1992, during the official sharing-out of the weapons and property of the former Soviet Army that were left in the Republic of Chechnya.  A similar share-out of the weapons and property of the Soviet Army was carried out between Russia and the other former “subjects” of the USSR

1992 was a key year for the Chechen Republic because of two more events which took place: the first was the adoption of our Constitution, which enshrined the status of the Chechen Republic as a democratic sovereign state. And the second was the signing of the Federal Treaty in Russia, in which the Chechen Republic did not participate, in spite of the crude pressure that was applied.

Where did the term “Chechnya is the part of Russia” come from.

In the Constitution which it adopted in 1993, Russia violated all possible legal norms by including the Chechen Republic as a “subject” of the Federation.  Not only had the Chechen Republic taken no part at all in the referendum on the Russian Constitution; that Constitution contains an article stating that the Russian State is a federal one, consisting of “subjects” which have voluntarily signed the Federal Treaty.  The authors of the Russian Constitution were not at all perturbed to include Chechnya in spite of the fact that it had signed no such thing

Ladies and gentlemen,
I will now with your indulgence offer a few dates and facts.  

In 1994, after three and a half years of blackmail, of undermining Chechnya and of state terrorism – but not enough to make the Chechen Republic capitulate – Russia unleashed full-blown warfare, using all kinds of troops and different weapons, including all those which are banned except for nuclear ones.  This attempt to seize Chechnya was cynically christened “The establishment of constitutional order”, while in fact being a war which violated all the tenets of normal law.

In 1996 the war ended, and all the Russian troops were withdrawn from the Chechen Republic.  In January 1997, with the active methodological and logistical support of the OSCE and in accordance with the Chechen Constitution of 1992, Chechnya held Presidential and Parliamentary elections, officially recognised by Russia and by the Council of Europe, which sent a large number of observers.

12th May 1997 saw the signing of the most important document in the whole history of relations between Russia and Chechnya: the Peace Treaty, which also laid down the basic principles for relations between Russia and the Chechen Republic Ichkeria.  Independent experts consider it both in form and in content to be a treaty between equal entities, and to be clearly international in character.

Treaties and agreements on cooperation between banks, Ministries of the Interior, Prosecution Services, Ministries of Justice, customs services and other leading agencies of both countries were later also signed and implemented in the same spirit as the original Peace Treaty.

The difficult but clearly promising process of establishing mutually acceptable inter-State relations between Russia and the Chechen republic was interrupted in 1998, when the FSB (KGB) put its own people in to replace the Russian Security Council headed by Ivan Petrovich Rybkin.  The FSB resurrected the idea that it was possible to settle the Chechen issue by force, and once the Security Council was headed by Putin, also Director of the FSB, that put a resounding stop to the negotiating process.