…WHILE FOREIGN MINISTRY LAMBASTES EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT.

On the same day that the Council of Europe voted in Strasbourg to admit Russia as a member, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman slammed the European Parliament in Brussels for having issued a resolution January 18 that sharply criticized Russian policy in Chechnya. The resolution "practically ignored…that the developments in Kizlyar and Pervomaiskoye were the handiwork of Chechen terrorists," the spokesman said in Moscow. Kizlyar and Pervomaiskoye are the Dagestani villages where Chechen fighters seized hostages and battled federal Russian forces during the past two weeks. The parliamentary resolution "deplored the apparent determination of the Russian government to settle the Chechen question by force" and warned that Moscow’s actions were straining relations between the European Union and Russia. Greeted in Moscow "with bitterness and surprise," the Ministry spokesman said the resolution was not the first instance of the European Parliament "demonstrating ignorance or reluctance to recognize that Chechnya is a member of the Russian Federation and that the crisis there stems from the existence of unlawful armed formations." (4)

NATO Reverses Charges.