CHECHNYA IGNORED AT G-7 SUMMIT AS MEDIATION FALTERS.

At their meeting with Boris Yeltsin in Moscow, G-7 leaders failed to heed urgent appeals from Russian democrats and international groups such as Helsinki Watch and Doctors Without Borders (see Monitor, April 19) to encourage Yeltsin to end the massacre of civilians in Chechnya. Unwittingly, some of the leaders appeared to confirm Yeltsin in his belief, as the Russian president stated in remarks addressed to his critical public (see Monitor, April 18), that Western leaders condone the carnage. U.S. president Bill Clinton notably again compared contemporary Russia with Civil War America and Yeltsin’s actions to those of Abraham Lincoln. Yeltsin for his part emphatically claimed that Russian forces had stopped military actions since his March 31 announcement of a settlement plan, which in reality ushered in a new wave of planned attacks on civilian settlements. Yeltsin also told his fellow summit participants that he expected his chosen mediators to persuade Djohar Dudaev to agree to keep Chechnya a part of Russia.

The Russian command acknowledged that mobile Chechen detachments under attack in the highlands were returning to lowland areas in the rear of Russian forces. Tatarstan president Mintimer Shaimiev, acceptable to both Dudaev and Moscow as a mediator, on April 22 and 23 obliquely but unmistakably blamed the continuing fighting on Moscow and ruled out any intercession on his part until there is a cease-fire. (Itar-Tass, Interfax, Western agencies, April 21-23)

Tokyo Chose not to Push Yeltsin on Kurils.