CHECHNYA LINKS LIBRARY

The Week in Brief: June 11 - June 17, 2001

The curfew in Chechnya was reduced by two hours, according to an order of the commander of the North Caucasian military district, Gen. Gennady Troshev. Movement on Chechen roads is thus allowed from 5:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m.

No major events.

Russian Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov announced the appointment of Lt-Gen Sergey Shchadrin as new head of the North Caucasian department of the ministry. - Interfax

Secretary of the Belorechye village administration in the Gudermes district, Yakub Nogmirzayev, was shot dead by unknown gunmen.

Russian human rights activist Sergei Kovalyov, on behalf of the Committee for Ending War and Restoring Peace in Chechnya, urged the leaders of the G7 and US President George W. Bush to force the Kremlin to negotiate an end to the war in Chechnya. The Committee sent US president and the other G7 leaders a letter in an appeal to “raise with President Putin the necessity of immediately beginning peace talks between Russia and the Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov.”

Two Russian Su-25 jets crashed in the mountainous Southern Chechnya.

About 2,000 Chechen refugees in Ingushetia held a rally in the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya in the Sunzhensky district calling for an immediate end of the war and the possibility for independent journalists as well as representatives of international human rights organizations to enter the territory of Chechnya.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) re-opened its office in the village of Znamenskoye, in the northwestern part of Chechnya, after a thirty-month halt of its activities in the republic.

European leaders gathered for EU summit in Göteborg, Sweden, expressed serious concern about the situation in Chechnya. “A political solution to the conflict is urgently needed. Reported violations of human rights should be thoroughly investigated in order to bring perpetrators to trial,” says the draft conclusion of the summit.

No major events.