How else can I account for this? But it’s not just soldiers who are suffering Look at the list

How else can I account for this? But it’s not just soldiers who are suffering Look at the list. Of the 18 cancer patients who have died since 1998, one is 28, another 26.” I look down the list: a 15-year-old, another a year older, a 23-year old, a little boy called Nebojsa Tesanovic who was only three. All came from areas heavily attacked by Nato aircraft with DU munitions.So isn’t this the time for a full international epidemiological study among these people to find out the truth? But as usual, these extraordinary medical events have been of no interest to Nato or its doctors. That a clue to the sickness of its own soldiers might lie here, in these hospital statistics, is apparently of no relevance.Of course, these are the same Bosnian Serbs who besieged Sarajevo; Mr Galinac and Mr Samacic belonged to the same Bosnian Serb army that slaughtered the Muslims of Srebrenica. But what is happening now among the Bosnian Serbs who survived the 1995 aerial attacks is something akin to a plague.. President Vladimir Putin transferred overall control of the war in Chechnya to the secret police from the armed forces yesterday, in a sign that Russian generals want to distance themselves from the still-simmering conflict. President Vladimir Putin transferred overall control of the war in Chechnya to the secret police from the armed forces yesterday, in a sign that Russian generals want to distance themselves from the still-simmering conflict.
Mr Putin claimed there was now no large-scale fighting in Chechnya, though Russian officials admit that rebels inflicted losses on Russian forces in Grozny, the Chechen capital, and Gudermes, the second-largest town, as recently as the weekend.Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB, received full authority over the Russian war effort under a decree signed by Mr Putin.

Moscow is to reduce the number of army units stationed in Chechnya. The FSB, in which Mr Putin used to serve, said it would reinforce its men in Chechnya and carry out special operations to eliminate guerrilla leaders.Some army units will stay in Chechnya along with units of Interior Ministry troops. But Moscow is likely to have increasing difficulty in holding on to the territory it has captured without soldiers backed by heavy armour and artillery.The timing of yesterday’s announcement may be linked to a meeting of the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly which is due to debate the suspension of Russia’s voting rights because of human rights abuses in Chechnya. Some military commanders on the spot have told the Russian media that they consider the withdrawal of the army premature and likely to lead to a deterioration in security.Russian officers have made clear that they believe they did their job by capturing Grozny last year and breaking up the larger rebel units in the southern mountains of Chechnya. General Yuri Baluyevsky, the deputy chief of staff, said: “Rebel groups are separated from each other and there is no organised resistance like the one that used to exist in 1999.” He added that the rebels now had only 1,000 men in the field compared with 20,000 at the start of the war, and that the Russian army had about 40,000 men and 170 tanks in Chechnya.For several months most of the fighting has been done by Interior Ministry troops. Akhmad Kadyrov, the pro-Moscow head of the regional administration, has called for a reduction in Russian troops and greater reliance on local militiamen.

But it is unlikely that Russia can rely on the loyalty of Chechen militiamen, many of whom are former guerrillas. In one incident in Grozny, soldiers were forced to give up two guerrilla leaders they had captured when they were surrounded by nominally pro-Russian Chechens.The problem for Mr Putin is that the Russian forces have completely failed to restore the economy or normal civil life in Chechnya. Foreign aid organisations have been distributing food to doctors and teachers who have not been paid in order to allow them to continue to work. Grozny is still in ruins and Russian artillery periodically shells districts of the city which it captured a year ago, but have slipped back under rebel control.The continuing conflict is an embarrassment for the Kremlin because it announced the war was won just before the presidential election last year. The guerrillas have since waged a low-level but effective campaign of sniping, mine-laying and assassinating pro-Russian local leaders. At the start of the war many Chechens who opposed the Russian invasion were still not prepared to fight because of the anarchy in Chechnya in the three years after the Russian army was defeated in 1996.

But the lack of Russian aid, endemic corruption among Russian officials and the disappearance of young Chechen men has given them little choice but to oppose the occupation.. President Vladimir Putin told visiting Israeli President Moshe Katzav today that Russia would try to help reach peace in the Middle East and further boost ties with Israel. President Vladimir Putin told visiting Israeli President Moshe Katzav today that Russia would try to help reach peace in the Middle East and further boost ties with Israel.
“We strongly expect that Russia’s efforts will help your country and other participants in the process to solve the difficult problems they are facing,” Putin said after welcoming Katzav in an ornate Kremlin hall. It was Katzav’s first visit to Russia as Israeli president, a largely ceremonial role.Russia is a co-sponsor of the Mideast peace process along with the United States, but has played a comparatively small role. Since the Soviet collapse, Moscow has lost most of the clout it had with the Palestinians and other allies in the Arab world that the Soviets armed. Meanwhile, Moscow has developed friendly relations with Israel after decades of animosity.”Our relations have been on the rise, although we haven’t yet achieved everything we planned with your colleagues,” Putin said Tuesday, referring to previous pledges to boost trade and economic ties.Also, Russia’s attempts to help negotiate Mideast peace have brought little result so far. In November, Putin hosted Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and arranged for him to speak by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, but the conversation failed to break the deadlock.Last month, Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Moscow and met with Putin to discuss the Mideast crisis.Putin also said that Moscow continues to be concerned about the hundreds of thousands of Russians and residents of other former Soviet republics who have emigrated to Israel.”A huge number of people from Russia and the former Soviet Union live in Israel, and we aren’t indifferent to their fate,” Putin said.

“We strongly count on those people to be a good connecting link, a bridge between our states.”The remarks contrasted sharply with Moscow’s treatment of emigres to Israel during Soviet times, when authorities hampered their departure efforts and described them as traitors to the motherland.Katzav, who arrived today for a three-day visit to Russia, will hold talks with Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. Katzav is also scheduled to meet Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Alexy II and make a speech before Russian businessmen.Katzav said during a visit to Ukraine on Monday that Israel was ready to make concessions in peace talks with the Palestinians Talks resumed in Egypt on Sunday without US help.. A member of Ukraine’s parliament was found dead from a gunshot wound in his office in eastern Ukraine, police said today. A member of Ukraine’s parliament was found dead from a gunshot wound in his office in eastern Ukraine, police said today.
The body of Yuriy Kononenko, 45, a lawmaker with the pro-government People’s Democratic Party, was found late yesterday in the city of Kharkiv near the Russian border, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry’s Kharkiv department said.Police were investigating several possible scenarios, including suicide, the spokesman said on condition of anonymity.Kononenko had been a member of the parliament’s committee on press and information freedom since February 2000.The committee has in recent months actively discussed a political scandal surrounding last fall’s disappearance of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze, who was critical of the government in his reports. Opposition politicians allege Gongadze was killed and that government officials were linked to the death, a charge the government fiercely denies.The spokesman in Kharkiv said police had no evidence linking the two cases..