PACE SESSION TO ADDRESS CHECHEN SITUATION.

On September 6, Dmitry Rogozin, chairman of the Russian State Duma’s Committee on International Affairs, told the Interfax News Agency that “at the September session of PACE [the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe] a circle of questions connected with the situation in the Chechen Republic will be discussed.” The “half-year breathing spell” concerning the Chechen problem, he noted, was now coming to an end. “Judging from everything,” he continued, “the question of Chechnya will be on the agenda, a view supported, in particular, by the approaching trip to the North Caucasus on September 13-15 by the person who presents the main address on the Chechen question at PACE, Lord [Frank] Judd.” Judd will be accompanied on this trip, Rogozin added, by the commissar for human rights of the Council of Europe Alvaro Gil-Robles. In addition, Rogozin said, on the eve of the September session of PACE, a seminar will be held in Strasbourg in which representatives of the Chechens will participate. Rogozin stated his opinion that it will be possible to organize democratic elections in Chechnya “not earlier than in two to three years.” “The final goal of peaceful regulation in that region,” he emphasized, “will be that Chechnya will become a normal subject of the Russian Federation.”