Chechnya

HL Deb 16 January 1996 vol 568 cc567-88

9.50 p.m.

Lord Rea rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking, together with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and other international organisations, to end the conflict in Chechnya.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, tonight, like the rest of the world who have had a front-seat view on their television sets, our thoughts and our sympathy will be with the people of Pervomaiskoye who, through no fault of their own, have become involved in the terrifying maelstrom of military violence of the past few days. Despite our condemnation of hostage-taking, it is now clear that the Russians and not the Chechens are killing the hostages. Most people will be amazed at the skilled and stubborn resistance of the Chechen fighters in the face of such overwhelming fire power. They are still holding out, even tonight, though I suppose they must lose in the end. Most will die, as will many hostages. However, they will have achieved one objective; that is, of astonishing the whole world by their unshakable determination to achieve independence for their country, which is rather smaller than Wales with a population of about 1 million.

A few days ago the Guardian mistakenly translated words on the headband worn by Salman Raduyev, leader of the Chechen fighters, as reading "kamikaze fighter". The next day an Arabic-speaking reader of the newspaper politely wrote to say that the actual translation of the headband was, "There is but one Allah and Mohammed is his prophet". There is no doubt that whatever many Chechens feel about Dzhokhar Dudayev, they are now involved in a genuine popular national liberation movement with a strong religious faith behind them.

It is not, as some authorities in Russia have said, a fundamentalist faith; it is Sufi Islam, which is a more moderate form of the faith. I can assure your Lordships that those whom President Yeltsin called bandits are regarded as heroes at home. The Russian behaviour at Pervomaiskoye is, on a smaller scale, similar to the way in which they have handled Chechnya as a whole during the past 13 months. Just over a year ago they unleashed on Grozny the heaviest bombardment of high explosives seen since the Gulf War. It was many times more intense than the attack on Sarajevo, although that sporadically continued for a longer time.

However vivid are the pictures on the small screen, the experience of seeing the devastated city at first hand is overwhelming. Your Lordships will be aware that at the request of the Parliamentary Human Rights Group I was able to visit Chechnya in the first week of December, six weeks ago. Through interpreters I was able to speak to ordinary Chechen people who had suffered during the conflict, to General Asian Maskhadov, who is the chief of staff of the Chechen forces, to close advisers of President Dudayev, to human rights workers and to members of the OSCE assistance group based in Grozny.

Large swathes of the city of Grozny have been damaged beyond repair and are being demolished, leaving a surreal Hiroshima-like landscape. It is a macabre, nightmare scene. Other human rights violations have occurred. I will touch on those shortly but the wanton destruction of Grozny, which was once a handsome city with tree-lined streets, is an atrocity in itself. Gudermes, the second Chechen city, was recently recaptured from the resistance after they had taken it virtually undamaged. The Russians have there again adopted the bulldozer approach and virtually destroyed the centre of the town. As in Pervomaiskoye, Chechens and non-Chechens have been killed. In Grozny, many Russians died, all of whom were non-combatants. That is a flagrant breach of the 1949 Geneva Convention which forbids the use of unnecessary force and the killing of civilians.

Many of the bands of fighters now surrounded at Pervomaiskoye will have lost close family members and they are very, very angry men. Salman Raduyev, who led the Budennovsk raid last summer, had lost 27 members of his, extended family.

The total of deaths in the war is not known exactly but 20,000 is a very conservative estimate. Of those, some 5,000 are military personnel, more Russian than Chechen, and there are 15,000—that is, three quarters of the total—civilians. If that figure among the 1 million Chechens were to be applied to the population of the United Kingdom of 56 million, the total number of deaths would reach more than 1 million. In World War Two we lost 60,000 civilians and 300,000 servicemen; in all, proportionally only a third as many as have died in the past 13 months in Chechnya.

I did not start by giving a historic background to the conflict but that can be found in Hansard of 18th April 1995 in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Belhaven and Stenton, who I am pleased to see is to speak this evening. However, it is important to point out that the current conflict is merely a continuation of a 250 year-old struggle between Russia and the peoples of the North Caucasus. The Chechens have always been the fiercest fighters among them. Like Poland, which has been ruled on and off by Russia for the past 200 years, they have never agreed voluntarily to be part of Russia. In fact, there is a strong fellow feeling between Poles and Chechens, despite their religious difference. Of course, the Poles are strong Catholics but they can sympathise with an Islamic nation.

Of the former federal republics of the Soviet Union which gained independence in 1991—some would say were decolonised—none had a longer history of confrontation with Russia than Chechnya. However, all the North Caucasian autonomous regions were retained within the Russian Federation itself.

The citizens of Chechnya elected Dudayev as president in 1991 on a clear independence ticket. Their neighbours, the Ingush, even though they had also been transported en masse to Kazakstan in 1944 with a loss of something like one-third of their numbers, took a more cautious line because the Russians had promised to get their ancient lands hack from Ossetia, which had stolen them during their absence between 1944 and 1957 in Kazakstan.

Instead of waiting to see if Dudayev would win another election which was due, as many noble Lords will know, on 17th December and which took place in most of Russia on that date last year, to test the Chechen people's adherence to Dudayev's independence policy, Boris Yeltsin launched a military assault a year earlier than that with the devastating results that I have described.

Last year, after the Russians finally captured Grozny, sporadic fighting continued. One of the successes of the past year has been the establishment, with Russian agreement, of an OSCE assistance group in Grozny. It was a particular success because it was within the boundaries of the Russian Federation. It had a mandate to establish a ceasefire and monitor allegations of human rights abuses. After negotiations, which lasted nearly 40 days, a ceasefire agreement was finally reached in July of last year, and until recently the scale of the fighting had considerably decreased, though it rumbled on sporadically.

The work of the OSCE mission has not been easy, but it is potentially of very great value. I was told that only a small proportion of the complaints brought to it could be followed up. This applied to both ceasefire violations and allegations of human rights abuses. This arises in part from the lack of vehicles and staff—over 1,300 complaints have reached the mission—and in part from Russian obstruction. The French OSCE Chef de Mission seemed very reluctant to complain about it as he felt that technically he was in Russia and was therefore their guest. He has been replaced by a new Swiss head of mission; he has inherited that post at an incredibly difficult time. The assistance group left Grozny at the time of the 17th December elections because of an expectation of a flare up of violence. Incidentally, the OSCE strongly advised that those elections should be postponed and that the security situation was so bad that it was completely inappropriate to hold elections at that time. The mission has now returned.

Early last year a rocket-propelled grenade hit the roof of the mission, and its personnel were withdrawn until the Russians improved security around it. When they did the mission under its then Hungarian leader returned, but the British member of the group did not, to the disappointment of the others. I hope that the noble Baroness is listening. He was a valuable member of the group. On my return from Chechnya I asked in a Written Question whether the British member would return to Grozny or be replaced. In her reply the noble Baroness said that he had returned to his unit. I understood that to mean that he had gone back to Grozny. However, in a chance meeting with Foreign Office officials yesterday I found out that "returned to his unit" meant his military unit, not his OSCE unit in Grozny. We still have no representative there. I must complain to the noble Baroness that the wording of her reply was very misleading. She did not even answer my Question, which asked whether he would return to Grozny or he replaced. I hope she will say why we are not playing our part in the mission when other nations are able to send their representatives.

Lord Chesham

My Lords, this is a time-limited debate. Each speaker is allocated 12 minutes. Fourteen minutes have expired, which means that the amount of time available to others to speak in the debate is reduced.

Lord Rea

My Lords, it is my understanding that the Peer who asks the Question has at least 15 minutes, and I have arranged to speak for 18 minutes.

Lord Chesham

My Lords, it is a time-limited debate. Twelve minutes are allocated to each person. If the noble Lord speaks for longer than that it will reduce the amount of time available to others.

Lord Hylton

My Lords, I can help the noble Lord by saying that I have no intention to speak for anything like 12 minutes.

Lord Rea

My Lords, this is a brutal war. Some may have seen television pictures of the weeping women of Samashki when 260 defenceless older men, and women and children, were killed in April last year. This was a "My Lai" style massacre. I heard testimony of mass graves and of "filtration" camps where beatings, torture and death took place.

My noble friend Lord Judd received a letter the other day from a Russian girl living in this country aged 12 who had recently been in Russia for a holiday. She wrote: I learned about a place in Grozny where people are taken to be tortured to death. Most people that are killed there are not soldiers, they are Chechen children or people who were taken to that place without reason". That may sound fanciful but it is true.

We heard of a child of nine who was in detention. He was in detention because he had seen his mother and two children killed in front of his eyes and had then picked up a Kalashnikov and killed the five soldiers who had been involved.

I should like to have asked the noble Baroness many more questions, particularly with regard to whether Russia should be admitted to the Council of Europe at next week's meeting. I very much hope she will advise that at the moment that is not appropriate. There are many more comments I could make but because of the time factor I shall now sit down.

10.6 p.m.

Baroness Park of Monmouth

My Lords, the only good thing about the terrible events in Chechnya which began in December 1994 is that the world knows they are happening and the Russian media are playing a brave part in making them public. Otherwise there is little difference—with some honourable individual exceptions such as Sergey Kovalev, the chairman of the Human Rights Commission, and perhaps Anatoly Volskyz, and, in the previous hostage situation, Mr. Chernomyrdin—between the way Russian power is being used today and the way it was used in the Soviet time. Then the OMON forces, the KGB's strong-arm men, killed without restraint in Nagorno-Karabakh, and in 1990 in the Baltic States, and in the streets of Tbilisi. Now they and the MVD's own dear thugs, the ALPHA group, are the Speznaz forces who are to the fore in Chechnya.

Operations ever since December 1994 have been principally carried out by the KGB and the MVD's troops under their own generals; at present the MVD General Kulikov, whom his army colleagues fear—he is, after all, now Minister of the Interior—and Mikhail Barsukov, head of the new KGB, the Federal Security Bureau. I have gone into that detail because, unfortunately, the Chechnya conflict is yet another indication, if not proof, that the leopard has not changed his spots and the KGB and the party are still running Russia. One of Dudayev's commanders, speaking about the recent projected agreement on special status for Chechnya, said that peace would never be established there, until Russia finds common ground with the legitimate authorities". But Russia has preferred to put in her own Moscow-backed man, Doku Zavgayev, who—surprise, surprise—received 99 per cent. of the vote of the Russian military in Chechnya, and subsequently claimed that, of the 68 per cent. of the electorate (another official figure was 87.6 per cent.) who voted, 98 per cent. cast their votes for him as candidate.

As the OSCE team, who knew all the personalities, left Chechnya during the period of the election, and as throughout Russia 700,000 Interior Ministry officers, of whom some were presumably in Chechnya, were detailed to "monitor" the elections, and as the percentages have the familiar ring of the old Soviet statistics, it is perhaps not surprising that the Chechens can put little faith in the political process. Sergey Kovalev warned well before the elections that they would lead to renewed fighting as, in spite of bloodshed, and by hook or by crook, somebody wants to appoint his man in Chechnya as the boss". The conditions were not, he warned, in lodging a complaint to the Supreme Court, in any way suitable for elections, given restrictions on movement, curfews and the presence of both illegal armed formations and Russian military units.

I hold no brief for Dudayev, but who among the Chechens could believe that the Russian state has ever seriously contemplated any solution but the use of force? A Radio Russia poll in December showed that 92 per cent. of those polled in Moscow and St. Petersburg wanted a peaceful settlement, but that view is not heard in what are known as the "power ministries".

Grozny is in ruins, although some money is now being spent on the all important oil installations. Gudermes, the second largest city, has been shelled by heavy artillery continuously so that the damage, including schools, hospitals and over 33,000 houses, is reckoned at 1,600 billion roubles. So far there are 15,000 to 20,000 refugees from the town, some of whom have been killed on the road as they tried to flee. According to the federal migration service there are now 290,000 refugees in Dagestan and in Ingushetia, many of them ethnic Russians, and there are 25,000 such refugees living in the 68 holding units scattered through the north Caucasus.

So long as the operations in Chechnya are carried out by the KGB and MVD forces we can, I fear, be sure that the safety of hostages and of the civilian population will he the last thing in their minds. It is not part of their culture.

Meanwhile, the Communist Party, after the Russian elections, is the largest single group in the Duma and its avowed policy is to restore the Soviet Union. That will not encourage the Chechens, if they have any trust left, to trust Moscow. Meanwhile, too, the CIS at its January summit will be discussing a statute on collective peacekeeping and drafting a document on the prevention and settlement of conflicts in the territory of the CIS. The UN, which has allowed the Russians to describe themselves as UN peacekeepers in Abkhazia, just down the road in the Caucasus, will no doubt be solemnly investing those peacekeepers, too, with UN status.

And what of the OSCE, which was so conspicuously not there, it seems, when the Chechen elections took place, despite having been there to mediate for nearly a year? Naturally, I bow to what the noble Lord, Lord Rea, said about the good work of the OSCE, but it has not been especially effective in Nagorno-Karabakh. The Russians, of course, love it all the more for its well-meaning ineptitude. It poses no problems; it embarrasses no one.

The Chechen problem is an internal problem, and the difficulties are great for any central government in dealing with determined and well-armed guerrilla action in guerrilla country—and in country where the central government ardently wish to protect and develop their oil pipelines (especially now that Kabardino-Balkaria, Chechnya's neighbour, is becoming an oil producer). However, we are surely free to refuse to regard Russia as a fit member of any European security or political organisation while her present disregard for human rights continues. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to tell us what the OSCE has put on the public record about all this and what it proposes to do.

We should not go on for ever considering whether we should refrain from comment for fear of endangering the present administration. That is something against which Sakharov warned us in the past. We can do them no harm by openly expressing our deep concern. We shall, on the other hand, damage democracy within Russia—and it is there—far more by failing to follow the courageous lead of such people as their own human rights commissioner.

10.12 p.m.

Lord Hylton

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for raising this matter at such a timely moment. I salute his courage and commitment in visiting the scene of action. I thought that he was particularly modest in the way he underplayed his role as an eyewitness.

I feel very strongly that it is up to all of us to emphasise strongly tonight the extent of the violence, the deaths, the injuries and the damage that have been inflicted in the past year or more. All concerned have suffered. The noble Lord, Lord Rea, drew a striking parallel between the appearance of Grozny now and that of Hiroshima in years gone by. He also gave the casualty figures or the best estimates so far made.

The water supply of Grozny, I understand, has been severely damaged. Proposals have been put forward by a British non-governmental organisation for its repair and restoration. One hopes that that will happen one day. I understand that Her Majesty's Government have at least expressed some desire to help. The consequences have been the total impoverishment of a very large section of the population which previously was at least some little way above the poverty line.

I encourage the noble Baroness who will reply for the Government to say something tonight, if she can, about displaced people. Perhaps she can include those who suffer through being displaced by earlier Caucasian conflicts.

The noble Lord, Lord Rea, touched upon the history of the country. I would only add that after a very difficult 19th century, when Chechen resistance lasted for some 30 years, there were continuous uprisings during the 1920s and 1930s in the Soviet period. We need to be aware of the fact that even Stalin's deportations of almost the entire population during the Second World War failed to break the Chechen national spirit and consciousness. It is also worth noting that for 35 years, from 1943 to 1978, all Chechen mosques were totally closed and abolished, but such measures failed to uproot the Islam and Sufi brotherhoods. With that kind of history, it is not surprising that any degree of trust by the Chechen people towards the Russian leadership and Russian military forces is almost entirely lacking.

We have also to be very aware of the location of the country. Its position is highly strategic. It straddles the oil and gas pipelines from Azerbaijan where large new reserves will fairly soon be brought into production. Those will he reinforced and enlarged by further production possibilities in Kazakhstan on the east side of the Caspian. Chechnya has borders with Ossetia, Georgia and the Russian Federation, which again make it a strategic place.

We also need to be well aware of the susceptibilities and interests of Russia. There is a strong degree of fear within Russia that any recognition of Chechen independence could pave the way to a break-up of the Russian Federation. The very difficult historical background and the various attempted but unfortunately failed negotiations that have taken place since 1991 further complicate the issue. In addition, there are the interests of the Russian element in the population which is quite considerable. Against that we have to remember, as the noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, mentioned, the marvellous efforts of Mr. Kovalyovs and others who take his point of view. Nor should we forget the impact on Russian thinking which the mothers of servicemen had at an earlier stage and possibly will continue to have.

What I suppose we are all looking for, hoping for and longing to see come about is a degree of moderation on the part of all those involved in this conflict, whether Russian or Chechen. If that could begin—I fear that it may not be all that likely—then there may indeed he a clear role for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. It is the only international, intergovernmental body that is in any way acceptable to the Russians. It also happens to be the only intergovernmental organisation that has a special brief to look after the interests of minorities. Therefore, it seems to me that it is particularly well suited for the task in hand. It is possible that there may he a slight window of opportunity for it, given that the duma elections are now over and that the Russian presidential elections will not happen until next summer.

Therefore there may possibly be scope for the organisation to try to achieve a new cease-lire to he followed by demilitarisation and disarmament, as was previously proposed and semi-agreed, followed in turn by negotiations on the future status of Chechnya. Whatever that future status may be, I feel that it is likely to require guarantees from outside countries or bodies to ensure at least a start on a nevi status. Equally important, in my view, will be the planning of reconstruction, technical aid and supervision of the use of any funds that may perhaps be internationally contributed. That constitutes a far larger and more important task than has been undertaken by any previous OSCE peace mission; for example, in the Baltic states, Kosovo or Moldova. I hope that if such an enlarged mission can be put in place, it will concentrate very much on both community development and conflict resolution.

Such a major opportunity will depend very much on the political will of the members of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. If that is lacking, I cannot see such an initiative starting. I wish to ask the Government to do their maximum to try to inspire the other members of the organisation to be far more positive about such a venture than they have been up to now.

10.23 p.m.

Lord Kennet

My Lords, I too wish to thank my noble friend Lord Rea for raising this subject and having been to the country. I wish to put in a word of praise also for the Parliamentary Human Rights Group, which plays an enormous role and has done so over the years in getting Members of both Houses of Parliament to places where the balloon has gone up, in order to bring back realistic reports of what is going on. We can be particularly pleased that its chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will speak in the debate from the Liberal Benches.

It seems to me that various crises are going on at different levels. The most obvious is the bloodshed, to which I shall come in a minute, but there is also the crisis of Russian democracy. That democracy is extremely young. It has by now roundly outlived the first attempt at democracy in 1917, hut it is not at all home and dry yet. The Russians are making a rather poor fist of it. That can hardly be surprising, given that they were sent off to an entirely false start by an invasion of Western ideologues and profiteers who wholly distorted the natural development of what could have been a more fortunate new democracy.

Therefore, the Russian Government are entitled to all forbearance from the West. Such forbearance has to be limited, but the first presumption must be to try not to kick them too hard; they have bigger problems than we can dream of. It is my guess that there are concurrently 17 problems bigger than we can dream of, of which Chechnya is only for the moment the gravest.

It is also necessary to balance that consideration by remembering that Russia has no better right to rule the peoples of the North Caucasus, or indeed other non-Russian peoples, than we should have in this day and age to rule the Indians and Africans, rule over whom we gave up 30 and 40 years ago. The Russians acquired dominion over the North Caucasus between 1780 and 1820, soon after Warren Hastings but long before the Indian Mutiny and the Macaulay reforms in India. It is a big, outstanding historical anomaly that there should still be, even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a thumping great white European empire in Asia. Bits of it will rebel; bits of it are rebelling. The natural course in the long run is for the imperial power—Russia—to do what all 11 European imperial powers have done; namely, to retire as peacefully as possible and build up good relations with new, independent states.

I want to ask the noble Baroness certain questions: the situation is so complicated that it is easy to be baffled by it, and Foreign Office Ministers have a head start in this sort of thing. If she can throw any light into the darkness, I think the House will be grateful.

The Chechens are fighting with modern weapons. Where do those weapons come from? The Chechens themselves tend to say: "We captured them from the Russians because we are such brilliant fighters". But other pictures can be traced if one has one's ear to the ground. Through what channels are they getting the weapons? In whose interest is it to arm them? I do not see why we should not speak fairly bluntly about this matter. I hope that the noble Baroness will speak fairly bluntly; I cannot, because I do not have the least idea.

What is the situation in regard to the pipeline? Who owns that pipeline? How many pipelines are there? I hope that the noble Baroness will find time to sketch that in. It could be quickly said. Few in this country have much notion. We probably know more about arrangements on the east coast of the Caspian than on the west—but there again, that could be just my ignorance.

What is British national interest there? The oil is an obvious interest. How big is our interest in the oil compared with that of other Western countries? That would be interesting to know, too. Do we have any other national interest there, beyond the obvious and always deserving one of the restoration of peace and the saving of life?

Lastly, can the Government sec any point in thinking of an arrangement—it might even he a federal arrangement—for some sort of bloc or association of Moslem states down the West Coast of the Caspian: Dagestan, Chechnya, Ossetia, the Ingush and others? Would they live at peace among themselves if they were liberated? If they did not, would the consequent wars be soon over, or is it possible to think of a series of completely independent countries there? All those things look far beyond the immediate humanitarian imperatives and far beyond immediate diplomatic possibilities. But, after all, what is this House for, if not to air such matters?

Lord Rea

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, would he agree that, if a political solution could be achieved and friendly relationships established between the peoples of the North Caucasus and Russia, it is much more likely that the oil would flow along those pipelines than if conflict continues, with the likelihood that those pipelines will constantly be blown up in guerrilla warfare?

Lord Kennet

Yes, my Lords, I most heartily agree with that. But it is always possible that there might be non-Russian and non-Caucasian interests who would think it worth risking a little bloodshed in order to make sure that they got a bigger slice of the final oil arrangement, whatever it is. We cannot—at least, I cannot—tell.

10.30 p.m.

Lord Belhaven and Stenton

My Lords, the whole House will be most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for raising this very important subject. As other noble Lords have said, he has shown great courage in going himself to Chechnya and thus has been able to give your Lordships a report at first hand and, if I may say so, not at too great length. It is not often that an Unstarred Question—which it is difficult enough for Back-Benchers to get on to the Order Paper, at any rate—has been so well timed.

In fact, events are moving very fast and I do not intend to make more than a passing reference to what is now happening, except to say that, from what we have seen and heard over the past two days, 150 Chechen fighters are taking on the whole might of the Russian army. It is an astonishing feat, whatever else one may make of it.

On 18th April last, I gave your Lordships a brief history of Chechnya. I shall not go into all that again. It is enough to say, as other noble Lords have said, that the Chechens are not Russians. They have never in their history wanted to be Russian and they do not even look like Russians. It is a very small nation and a very small country, but they want their independence and believe that their country belongs to them. I do not find that unreasonable. However, on the evidence so far, Her Majesty's Government do seem to find it somewhat unreasonable.

In the debate on the Partnership and Co-operation Agreement between the European Communities and their member states and the Russian Federation which preceded my Unstarred Question on the 18th April, my noble friend Lady Chalker said that: a political agreement must be worked out which will allow the Chechen people to express their identity within the framework of the Russian Federation".—[Official Report, 18/4/95; col. 401.] Later, on the same day. my noble friend Lord Inglewood said exactly the same in exactly the same words.

The words: within the framework of the Russian Federation", are what all this is about. The Chechens do not wish to remain within the framework of the Russian Federation, for excellent reasons. Their history over the past 200 to 300 years has been one of continuous resistance to Russia in its various guises as Russian Empire, Soviet Union or present Russian Federation. So great was their wish to be outside the federation that they declared independence as soon as they could do so.

The Russian answer was, unfortunately, to subject Chechnya to a trade embargo, to attempt to subvert the country's institutions and even to try to murder its president. There were also negotiations, and in the course of the negotiations, in August 1994, President Yeltsin said: An armed intervention in Chechnya is out of the question. We in Russia have uniquely succeeded in avoiding inter-ethnic conflicts because we refuse to use force. Should we violate this principle in Chechnya, there will be a general uprising in the Caucasus. There will be so much chaos and bloodshed that no one will forgive us". I quoted that in last April's debate, but I do not apologise for quoting it again. President Yeltsin is strangely inconsistent in some of his statements. He also said in 1992 to President Walesa of Poland that Russia had no objection to Poland joining NATO. He reversed that statement about three months later. In fact, it is hard to know who, if anyone, is making the decisions in Moscow. But at any rate, it is a fact that only four months after President Yeltsin's statement about not using force in Chechnya, the Russian army did just that and invaded Chechnya with a display of brutal incompetence which most of the world was able to watch on their television screens.

I will not dilate on the destruction of Grozny and the surrounding villages; they have already been described by other noble Lords. However, I should like to refer to an incident described in your Lordships' House by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury—if he will forgive me—last April; that is, that on 7th April 1995 the village of Samashki was subjected to a night of bombardment by planes and artillery. After that, Russian troops moved in and, using flame-throwers and grenades, massacred the inhabitants where they were hiding in the cellars beneath their houses. Those Russian soldiers are the men whom we now have as allies in Bosnia. One can only hope that the peacekeeping methods they applied in Chechnya will not be used in Bosnia.

The last sentence of President Yeltsin's strange pronouncement on Chechnya—that if Russia uses force, there will he so much chaos and bloodshed that no-one will forgive us"— has already proved almost baseless. Of course the West has forgiven them. Anyone with even a slight knowledge of our Foreign Office and the foreign offices of the EC could have told the president that.

President Yeltsin said yesterday, if I understood the television report correctly, that all the bandits in Chechnya would now be wiped out and punished. Here I pause to reflect that successive Russian and Soviet governments have always referred to those who stand up to them as "bandits". The Poles in the Warsaw uprising were also "bandits", even though they were supposed to be Russia's allies. I do not consider that people who are fighting for the independence of their country are bandits, gunmen or however else one chooses to describe them. Our media describe them as gunmen and so forth and ought not to do so.

I regret the recent hostage-taking, but the Chechens may well feel that, unless they do something spectacular, no one will take any notice of them. It is also a fact that, if we are talking about banditry, the Russian army is a past master of the most brutal forms of banditry, as the destruction of Grozny and Samashki demonstrate.

As Chechen resistance continues in the face of what appears to be overwhelming force, and looks as though it will continue indefinitely, there will be a temptation for the Kremlin to revert to the policies of General Yermolov in the early 19th century and of Stalin in this century, and to propose wiping the nation out—in modern parlance, "genocide". If that happens, Her Majesty's Government and our allied governments will react very strongly. After all, it could quite reasonably be said that the West is financing the Chechen war. The amount of the recent IMF loan is estimated to be about the cost of the war so far. In fact, I imagine that most of the loans and subventions to Russia over the past few years will go to the maintaining of the military and defence establishment, which still forms the largest part of the Russian budget, in spite of the bankruptcy of a great deal of the country.

I should like briefly to refer to my noble friend Lady Park of Monmouth, if only to ask my noble friend Lady Chalker to take a great deal of notice of what she says. She spoke in the debate on the Address and today, and her knowledge of the subject is well worth listening to, particularly by Her Majesty's Ministers.

I conclude by saying that we are faced with an extremely menacing situation in Chechnya. The repercussions will be felt not just in that small country, but throughout the world. The resurgence of Russian militarism and Russian imperial dreams is a real danger today, and at the very least we ought not to pay their bills. We ought also to do something about our own defence and Armed Forces, which have been so savagely cut over the past few years. We may need our fighting men sooner than Whitehall imagines.

10.39 p.m.

Lord Avebury

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for the hazardous mission he undertook in Chechnya at a time when military operations were being conducted there. He went into areas which were liable to be under military threat; he spoke to people who had suffered from the military operations undertaken by the Russians; and he has brought us back a vivid picture of the immense sufferings of the people and the huge destruction that has been wrought in the fabric of Chechnya, particularly of Grozny.

We have seen the pictures of Grozny. One particularly vivid one will resound down the years in the same way as the picture of the little girl in Vietnam crossing a bridge with all her clothes blown off by the military operations that were going on. The images of Grozny, the stark, bare walls rearing up out of the landscape, so like, as described by the noble Lord, Lord Rea, Hiroshima after the atom bomb, have made us think carefully, if we had not done so already, about what kind of political solutions there can be to this appalling military conflict. The visit of the noble Lord, Lord Rea, and his colleagues could not have been more timely and this debate is even more so.

In passing, it must be said that it is a great pity that your Lordships do not have a mechanism for enabling our Members and those of another place to study human rights and humanitarian problems on site in the way the noble Lord has done. Our procedures do not allow those who undertake missions of this kind on their own initiative to be given time to inform your Lordships of their findings. At one point I suggested to the Leader of the House that we should have a Select Committee on human rights so that first-hand evidence of the kind the noble Lord has presented could be collected on a more systematic basis and made available to Parliament and the public. Perhaps the Minister will be sympathetic to that concept because she is one of the most widely travelled Members of your Lordships' House. I know that she has just returned from Freetown, Abidjan and Dakar.

Many important issues have been raised during the debate and I should like to highlight some of them. The noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, gave the figures of the number of people displaced and particularly the huge number who are refugees in Dagestan and in Ossetia and who presumably, because they are technically still within the boundaries of Russia, do not count as refugees within the meaning of the convention. I should like to ask whether any suggestion has been made that the UN rapporteur on internally displaced people should be invited to examine the problem in Dagestan and Ossetia and see what resources the United Nations might make available.

In the context of the United Nations role, I should like to refer to what the noble Lord, Lord Belhaven and Stenton, said about incipient genocide. We have not reached that stage and we hope to God that it will not happen and that the Russians will draw back from the brink. But at what stage would the United Nations become involved and at what stage would we take preventive action to stop the threat of genocide? After all, everyone approved the United Nations Secretary-General's agenda for peace some 18 months ago in which he placed enormous emphasis on preventive diplomacy. There could hardly be a time when preventive diplomacy was more necessary than in the case of the conflict in Chechnya today.

In 1992 Mort Halperin and David Scheffer of the Carnegie Endowment identified 115 self-determination movements worldwide. Five of them were in the Russian Federation. Some demands were for total independence and that is how the Chechen rebels' claims are articulated, as we saw from their London representative's appearance on television last night and heard again from the noble Lord, Lord Belhaven and Stenton, this evening. However, as many experts, notably Professor Hurst Hannum, have pointed out, there are creative intra-state solutions that recognise the value of diversity without mandating or encouraging division. Those are more likely to achieve the desired results in many cases than the creation of separate states. The Russians did succeed in reaching an accommodation with Tatarstan and although many of the people there felt that the agreement was not far-reaching enough it did at least avoid the violence and destruction we have seen in Chechnya.

It is possible that in the end Russia's 19th century conquests will all have to be relinquished. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, suggested that that was the case and that Russia will have to give up its empire just as Britain, France and Holland did in the decolonisation years of the 1960s and 1970s. The fact that Russia annexed the lands belonging to its immediate neighbours while the maritime powers developed what were called "salt-sea" empires makes no difference to the relationship between master and subject.

In the western empires except, I believe, in the case of the Belgians and the Portuguese, there was a gradual and progressive development of self-governing institutions buttressed by an infrastructure of political parties, trade unions, a relatively free press and the rule of law, whereas in Russia there is an attempt to telescope the process into a few months. As I understand it, the aim is a set of agreements between the centre and the regions, including territories which are not ethnically distinct such as Kaliningrad and Sverdlovsk, giving as much sovereignty as possible to the regions. But the cost of retaining Chechnya within a framework of that sort could he very high.

I very much deplore the violations of the laws of war, of which we have heard this evening and of which, it has to be said, both sides are guilty in the Chechnya conflict. The indiscriminate bombardment of Grozny, the deliberate targeting of civilians by certain Russian commanders, as the noble Lord, Lord Belhaven and Stenton, reminded us yet again this evening, and the taking of hostages by the armed opposition are all breaches of Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which applies to, an armed conflict of a non-international character". The article expressly prohibits, violence to life and person [against] persons taking no active part in the hostilities", as well as the taking of hostages.

So it has to be said that the conduct of Mr. Salman Raduyev is a crime under international law, as well as under the domestic laws of Russia. If he and any of his followers survive the assault on Pervomaiskoye, which does not seem to be an unqualified success as the fighting is still going on this evening, presumably they will he brought before a court of law and tried for those offences; similarly, if they are caught, the Chechens responsible for two further instances of hostage-taking which have occurred in the past 24 hours—the abduction of the power station workers in Grozny and this evening, as we heard on the Nine O'Clock News, the taking over of a vessel in the Turkish port of Trabzon. The rebels have taken hostage 165 passengers and have persuaded the Turks to allow them to sail into the Black Sea, threatening to kill Russian passengers at intervals of 10 minutes if their demands are not met.

The Russians are also committing very serious crimes. According to a Chechen spokesman on Ekho Koskvy radio, a Russian artillery attack on the village of Tsentoroy, in Chechnya's Shali district, yesterday killed 42 people, mostly women and children. In the Pervomaiskoye operation one saw on the news this evening that artillery, armoured vehicles and helicopters were still being used although I understand that the commander of the Russian forces had ordered that only small arms were to be employed in an attempt to prevent the loss of innocent lives.

Many noble Lords have mentioned the role of the OSCE. Like every other OSCE state the Russians are hound by the declaration of December 1994, which provides: If recourse to force cannot be avoided in performing internal security missions, each participating State will ensure that its use must be commensurate with the needs for enforcement. The armed forces will take due care to avoid injury to civilians or their property". The difficulty for any observer who wants to see the OSCE's conflict prevention mechanisms working more effectively is that the OSCE does not believe in the principle of transparency. In its annual report it publishes brief accounts under the heading, "Early Warning, Conflict Prevention and Crisis Management", which give some indication of the scale of the problems in the region. However, there are only three paragraphs on the situation in Chechnya and the establishment of the assistance group already mentioned. What is the assistance group doing now that the conflict has erupted with such great force?

Ministers were pleased with the progress made in the OSCE's conflict resolution mechanisms at Budapest; yet in Chechnya their weakness has been exposed. The involvement of the international community in the solution of internal conflicts has been recognised and accepted, and there is a provision for these matters to be put on the agenda of the Council of Ministers without the consent of the state concerned. But if the informal assistance of the chairman-in-office is not accepted, it is unlikely that the ministerial Council will do any better.

Britain could play a bigger role in trying to ensure that the rule of law operates in the proceedings of the OSCE and that in the Russian Federation, with its weak and vacillating leadership, military force is used as a last resort. The Chechens are a proud and determined people, who could not be eradicated by the Tsars, nor by Stalin, and certainly not by Mr. Yeltsin, with all his rockets and tanks. Let us appeal for a cease-fire and for an intensified diplomatic initiative by the OSCE to get the parties to return to the conference table.

10.52 p.m.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey)

My Lords, like those who have spoken before me, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for his extremely timely debate this evening on Chechnya. We are also grateful to him for his courageous visit. Many of us who go to places where there is conflict know just how important it is to get first-hand information, but it is also important to try to see the whole picture and, regrettably, it is difficult to do that, particularly in this conflict.

The increasing conflict in Chechnya is of grave concern to the whole international community. I believe that the conflict is an absolute tragedy. It has brought untold and wanton devastation to the people and the republic and has already cost thousands of lives, including those of very many innocent civilians. As the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has just told us, there has been further hostage-taking tonight outside Chechnya in Turkish waters. Tens of thousands of people have lost their homes and daily the conflict continues to claim innocent lives.

All that is despite the military agreement which was reached in July 1995. The fighting and the civilian casualties continue, recently in Gudermes, Chechnya's second city. In Kizlyar, in the neighbouring republic of Dagestan, and in Pervomayskoye, the past few days have seen repeated incidents not only of hostage-taking but of wanton killing by Chechen gunmen. We very much regret that it has not been possible yet to resolve this crisis peacefully because day after day innocent civilian lives are at risk, and many are taken.

Since the Russian intervention in Chechnya over a year ago, we, our EU partners and the international community as a whole have pressed for an early and lasting settlement. There needs to be an effective way of enabling the Chechen people to express their identity within the framework of the constitution of the Russian Federation. I know that my noble friend Lord Belhaven and Stenton does not like that phrase. It is crucial that a way is found to allow these people to have their own identity working within that framework. I shall return to the reasons for that.

Two elements are crucial to reaching that particular goal. First, and for sound reasons expressed by all speakers tonight, the fighting must stop as soon as possible. There is no justification for the loss of life, whoever takes it, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury said. There is provision for a ceasefire in the military agreement reached in July. That is why it is right that the international community should urge all parties to abide by it. However, that requires restraint not only on the part of the federal authorities but also on the part of the Chechen authorities.

The second reason that it is crucial to reach the goal of peace is that there has been little or no progress to restart the stalled talks to implement the military agreement. Without that there can be no expectation of conditions being built up to maintain a long-term settlement. That is why we have urged all sides unconditionally to return to the negotiating table.

The noble Lord, Lord Rea, raised the role of the OSCE in ending the conflict, as did my noble friend Lady Park of Monmouth and other speakers. The OSCE, through Switzerland, its chairman in office, and through the assistance group in Grozny, continues to play an active and constructive role in efforts to promote a peaceful settlement. That includes a full investigation of the human rights abuses, which is a crucial part of its overall job.

I can tell your Lordships that Switzerland and the assistance group enjoy our full support in this. We continue to urge all sides to give the assistance group the freedom to carry out its mandate fully and in safety. That must be made to work.

I wish to try to respond to some of the points that have been made tonight. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Rea, felt that in my Answer on 9th January to his Written Question I misled him. Certainly, there was no intention on my part to mislead. When one talks of a soldier returning to his unit one talks of him returning to the military unit to which he belongs. I do not believe that the second paragraph denies that we were continuing to look at the whole question of replacement when I said: We will keep the question of British participation in the Assistance Group under review and will keep in touch with the Swiss incoming chairman in office on the issue."—[Official Report, 9/1/96; col. WA1.] I take the noble Lord's point that he did not follow it and only when he was in touch with officials in the Foreign Office yesterday did he realise the implication of the Answer. Perhaps I may continue on the point of the UK member who was withdrawn last year.

Lord Rea

My Lords, perhaps I may make a brief intervention and I thank the Minister for giving way. Will she indicate how considerations relating to a replacement for Flight Sergeant Kelly are going? Why is it that the British are the only members of the assistance group who have not returned its members? Does that not indicate that we are not taking seriously the OSCE assistance group in Bosnia?

Baroness Chalker of Wallasey

My Lords, I can assure the House that we are taking the membership of the assistance group extremely seriously. The UK member was withdrawn last year when the security situation deteriorated and when we could no longer rely on the maintenance of the security of that group.

In principle, we are willing to second somebody to the assistance group. That is why we are in close touch with the new Swiss chairman in office, not only on that but on all other aspects of the assistance group's activities which have been referred to this evening. We want to see the OSCE group working to the best possible outcome. The group, under the new Swiss head of mission, Tim Guldimann, has a very important responsibility to get on with this job. He has only just begun. I hope that there will be some further news for the noble Lord before very long. Certainly, the withdrawal of the previous head of mission was unfortunate but it was after a serious and very genuine car accident.

I assure my noble friend Lord Belhaven and Stenton that I do regard the words of my noble friend Lady Park of Monmouth as very wise. My noble friend Lady Park had a very realistic scepticism about what the Russians are up to. In addition, she asked about the assistance group. It has a very difficult job to do. The first reports from Mr. Guldimann give us some confidence that there will be increased activity, and we must help with that. We are certainly very confident that he will prove an effective leader of the group.

His objective is plainly to be in touch not only with the Russians but also with the Chechens and Mr. Dudayev as well as with the elected leader, Mr. Zavgaev, about whose election I will say little more than that I note the figures. What more can one say? The figures and the non-viable opposition to him speak for themselves.

I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, is right to say that we must do as much as possible to persuade the OSCE to be far more positive. That is why I welcomed very much the appointment of the new Swiss head, who I believe will give fresh inspiration. But let us not in any way expect a miracle because this is one of the most difficult situations to be faced for a very long while.

Lord Hylton

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. Does she agree that the scale of effort and the scale of operation needed to make any real difference in this situation is far greater than anything else that the OSCE has so far attempted?

Baroness Chalker of Wallasey

My Lords, it is extremely difficult to make comparisons. One thinks of all the problems in Azerbaijan and the situation in Stepanakert. I should not like to make comparisons. In some cases the only answer to a continuing conflict is the activities of an OSCE mission. Each mission believes that its difficulties are the greatest. But I agree that this is a difficult problem for the very reasons outlined by my noble friend Lady Park of Monmouth; namely, the whole changing political situation in Moscow and throughout the former Soviet Union.

We have heard President Yeltsin's welcome assurances that he is committed to a negotiated settlement. We know also that he signed up to the ceasefire, which is patently not succeeding at present. But one of the difficulties had been the internal Russian fighting. We must remember that the initial success of the peace negotiations, which were started by Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, were undermined by a series of terrorist attacks on senior Russian figures including Lobov, President Yeltsin's envoy, on General Romanov, the commander of the Russian forces, and on Zavgaev, the leader of the Russian-backed Chechen Government. That is what led the Russians to break off the negotiations and it is why I believe that it will be quite difficult to get them back.

Since that time there has been a steady escalation in violence. We are deeply concerned at the reports that Russian troops have used excessive force, whether in the recapture of Gudermes or in the current fighting. Equally, we are concerned at the reports of excesses by Chechen fighters, and most recently the terrorist actions not only in Kizlyar and Grozny but tonight on board a ship in Turkish waters. We appeal for restraint on both sides and for a cessation of the actions which exacerbate the conflict and hinder the search for a negotiated peace. That is of crucial importance.

The concern of many about the OSCE and the assistance group is that they have not yet used their full mandate, which includes the investigation of allegations of human rights abuses and to find a way to resolve the situation. We support them in all that work. They also have a mandate to assist in the holding and monitoring of elections, but I do not believe that that subject will come up again for some time. Your Lordships will remember that we and our European partners raised very severe doubts about the wisdom of holding the elections last December. They did not monitor the elections because of concerns for the safety of the mission, which answers the question asked by my noble friend Lady Park. Now that the OSCE mission is back, it has our full support. I believe that it has a better chance than it had before.

The noble Lord, Lord Rea, my noble friend Lady Park of Monmouth and others asked about the Council of Europe and the possible accession of Russia to the Parliamentary Assembly. There is a meeting on 25 January in Strasbourg. Some argue that the conflict in Chechnya is evidence of Russia's unsuitability for membership. Earlier today I spoke to David Atkinson, a Member in another place. He had himself been involved in the debate a few days ago in another place. On the basis of his experience of the denial of human rights ill many parts of Russia, I discussed with him whether he felt that it would be better to have the pressure of the Council of Europe on Russia as a member or to keep Russia out of the Council at the present. I share his view that to bring Russia into the European family of democracies through the Council of Europe will give us an additional opportunity to reinforce the need for respect for human rights, for minorities and for the rule of law. But I believe that this issue will be thoroughly debated in Strasbourg. There are some very strong contrary views. The important point is to improve their behaviour overall as regards human rights.

The security of the OSCE mission has been mentioned on several occasions. I believe that that is paramount. We have to rely on the Russian authorities for the protection of the mission. There are Russian guards on their compound. There is no real alternative to that. The situation must be kept under review. Unless there is adequate security, the mission will not be able to do its work. That is a crucial part of the overall problem.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, asked me about Chechen weapons, where they came from and who was arming them. He also asked about the pipeline situation in the area. I will give what answers I can provide now, but I may need to write to him with further details when I have had a chance to look a little further into the matter. The evidence we have about the weapons used by the Chechens is that they come mainly from supplies left behind by the Russian forces after Dudayev came to power in 1991. There are reports of smuggling from a variety of sources but all in that general area of the world. As far as the pipeline is concerned—

Lord Rea

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt but I hope I may add a small amount of information on weapons. It was our information that it was quite easy for the Chechens to buy weapons from the Russian forces at quite cheap rates, down to the ridiculous level of getting five boxes of 50 rounds of ammunition or a Kalashnikov for a chicken.

Baroness Chalker of Wallasey

My Lords, the black market works in a black way, and that is the situation that the noble Lord has just described. I am quite certain that whether they bought them from someone who had stolen them or picked them up, acquiring them was not as difficult as even that description might have implied.

As regards the pipeline, I understand that an international consortium, of which British Petroleum is a member, hopes to export most of the early oil from the concession which was signed with Azerbaijan out through that pipeline, but agreement for the use of the pipeline has not yet been signed with Russia and presumably until it is there will be no production going out.

As regards the noble Lord's question about British interests in Chechnya, we hope to see an end to the conflict in Chechnya. I cannot take him any further on his hypothetical question about a federation of Moslem states down the west coast of the Caspian Sea. That is a hypothetical question and I do not have time tonight to debate such interesting issues.

The most important thing I should say to the House is that we are determined to help bring an end to this. We hold no brief for anyone who takes hostages. We understand that there are some real difficulties for the Russian Government, but the reporting to date seems to suggest that excessive force has been used in the attempt to free the hostages, and indeed in the general fighting. We are communicating our concerns to the Russian Government and we shall make sure that we use all the opportunities we have to make those views known hut also to try to work out ways in which the situation could be resolved.

I come back to the problem that my noble friend Lord Belhaven and Stenton mentioned. The OSCE principle which works throughout the countries signed up to it is that frontiers are inviolable but they can be changed peacefully and by agreement. The examples of peacefully agreed frontier changes obviously include German unification, the establishment of separate Czech and Slovak republics and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Chechnya is internationally recognised as part of the Russian Federation. That is why we say that we are looking for a solution within the framework of the Russian Federation. Any cessation from membership of the Russian Federation has to be mutually agreed, and it has been a longstanding part not only of British policy but certainly of other OSCE countries too that the right to self-determination does not equate automatically with the right to cessation.

There may be a way of finding a solution for Chechnya which is known as the Tatarstan solution. That provides for maximum autonomy short of outright independence. I gather that that is negotiable. I hope that that clear message may emerge from the forthcoming debate of the Council of Europe—that it should seek to try to work out a Tatarstan solution.

This has been a valuable debate, as so often in this House, and the experience, knowledge and thoughtful reflection of all of your Lordships have featured in it. I understand the deep concern about the consequences of the continued fighting. We have not lost sight of the suffering which Chechnya's civilian population continues to endure as a result of the conflict. The international agencies have mobilised their resources. They are to he praised for their efforts, so often in dangerous conditions. We were particularly saddened to hear of the tragic death of a Finnish worker and the decision to withdraw international staff temporarily.

We shall maintain our efforts to assist the victims of the conflict. We have already given substantial aid. We wish to see the conflict stopped, not to have to go in and patch up the situation. We have committed nearly £2.5 million in bilateral aid and a further £1.8 million as the UK's share of European Union aid. We have given over £500,000 for transport, shelter, food and sanitation projects. We are continuing to look at other projects, and we shall pay special attention to the water needs which were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton.

Our long-term goal is to see peace. It is clear that the conditions for a settlement acceptable to both sides are still some way off. The search for peace will he hard won, but it is the OSCE which must be the vehicle for re-establishing an element of trust and confidence between the sides. It must encourage contacts at all levels to pave the way for a more substantive and constructive dialogue.

We shall continue to take every opportunity, both bilaterally and with others, to press home the need for the fighting to stop and for negotiations to resume. That is the only way to build a safe future for the Chechen population which expresses their distinct identity within the Russian Federation.

I repeat my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for giving us the opportunity for this debate at such an opportune time.

House adjourned at sixteen minutes past eleven o'clock.