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FIGHTING FOR PEACE
APRIL 1, 1996
TRANSCRIPT
Russian President Boris Yeltsin has announced a planned ceasefire in Chechnya. Yeltsin has already tried unsuccessfully to end the conflict between Russia and rebels who want an independent Chechnya. Following an Independent Television News report, Margaret Warner leads a discussion of the ceasefire proposal, and its possible effect on the Russian presidential election in June.
MARGARET WARNER: Over 15 months of fighting in Chechnya, more than 30,000 people have been killed, Chechen civilians and rebel fighters and 3,000 Russian soldiers. Now, facing reelection in June, President Yeltsin has come up with a new plan. We have a report from Ian Glover James of Independent Television News about Yeltsin's latest bid for peace.
IAN GLOVER JAMES, ITN: Under Boris Yeltsin's plan, federal Russian forces in Chechnya are to stop military operations and in peaceful areas withdraw, handing over to the gray-uniformed interior ministry troops who still conduct what the Russians call anti-terrorist operations. As the news broke in the Chechen capital, Grozny, some Russian soldiers seemed openly relieved. Yeltsin's rivals in the election race to be Russian President were scornful of his Chechen speech.
GRIGORY YAVLINKSKY, Democratic Opposition Leader: Certainly he is doing such that only because he must be elected, wants to be elected on the 16th of June elections. From one hand it shows that democracy in Russia a little bit works; from the other hand, it shows that his attitude to the war in Chechnya is very double-faced and cynical.
GENNADY ZUGAYNOV, Communist Party Leader: (speaking through interpreter) Was it necessary to wait a year and bomb half this republic to get this? It was not.
IAN GLOVER JAMES: In the southern villages where they're still holding out against the Russians, Chechen fighters gathered to watch Yeltsin's broadcast. He promised a cessation of military operations and a package of political measures, but troop withdrawal would only affect the 2/3 of Chechnya the Russians believe they control.
There were signs Yeltsin is contemplating a greater autonomy for Chechnya after peace has been achieved. But his cautious offer to open talks through intermediaries with the Russian leader Dzhokhar Dudayev was simply laughed at.
DOKA MAKHAYEV, Chechen Commander: (speaking through interpreter) We expect the
worst. We are ready for the worst. Yeltsin can say this, but the war will go on.
IAN GLOVER JAMES: Overhead, Russian helicopters patrol an uneasy calm. On the ground, Chechen villages survey the aftermath of Russian shelling, suspicious of anything Moscow tries next.
MARGARET WARNER: We get two views now. Leon Aron is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and is writing a biography of Boris Yeltsin. Stephen Sestanovich is vice president of Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment. He was on the National Security Council staff in the Reagan administration. Welcome, both of you. Leon Aron, are Boris Yeltsin's opponents we've just heard accurate that this is strictly an election year ploy?
LEON ARON, American Enterprise Institute: Well, in democracies, election year ploys sometimes turn into policies, and that's how democracies work. And hopefully, this is how it might work for Russia. Clearly, Yeltsin has always stated that the war in Chechnya is something that is continuously stabbing him in the back. If he has, his chances for reelections, at least at this point, are rather slim, but certainly without ending the war there, they're going to be almost non-existent. So I think on Yeltsin's part, this is a step that we all expected. The question is: (a) How serious he is, and (b) and I think he is serious, because his back is against the wall, but also how much control he actually has over the actual structure in place in Chechnya.
MARGARET WARNER: What's your answer to those two questions, Steve Sestanovich? In other words, can this really lead to something substantive?
STEPHEN SESTANOVICH, Carnegie Endowment: It can be hard for him. He's got very little time to show real progress. It's very, very hard to extricate yourself from a war of this kind when you don't really know who you're dealing with, you don't know what the degree of control and unity is on the other side. As the Israelis have discovered, you make peace with the moderates or establish negotiations with the moderates, and the next thing you know, terrorism goes up.
MARGARET WARNER: What do you think the prospects are?
MR. ARON: Well, you know, it's very interesting about the Chechen rebels. I think
Steve's parallel could be extended a bit further. Hamas essentially has now in its power more or less to make or break--
MARGARET WARNER: That's the Palestinian rejectionist group.
MR. ARON: Palestinian rejection group, right--make or break, uh, Shimon Peres and his chances for reelection. I think to a certain extent Dzhokhar Dudayev, the leader of the Chechen secessionists, has almost the same power over Boris Yeltsin. And they are in the predicament that as they--the Chechen fighters--either they, they follow the pretty well justified hatred of Yeltsin and decide to--not to give him an inch and contribute very significantly to his defeat, if that defeat occurs in the Presidential poll, or they decide to take what they can now because Yeltsin's politically weak and his back is against the wall and it is probably the best deal they'll get--Communists, if Yeltsin is not, is not reelected, they cannot expect a better deal than is offered now.
MARGARET WARNER: And maybe a worse deal.
MR. ARON: Uh, somebody from, umm, the Communist leader's group was at our institute the other day, and he said, sovereignty of Russia over Chechnya is not negotiable, so, you know, they will not get independence either from Yeltsin or the Communists, but I think Yeltsin has more incentive now to be flexible.
MARGARET WARNER: So Steve Sestanovich, how do you interpret today's attack by the Chechens on this Russian army column? I mean, do you think that was, that was directed by Dudayev, the Chechen leader? Do you think that represents a decision that they made vis-a-vis the choice that Leon Aron just laid out?
MR. SESTANOVICH: Well, this is a war in which such things are happening every day, and we shouldn't over-interpret this. But I think it would be surprising to discover that the--that the Chechens would simply stand down and that the war would end while negotiations began. Incidentally, we don't even know that they're going to begin, or that there's even a mediator who's agreed to do it. If they begin, both sides will wage war at the bargaining table and on the battlefield. They will be constantly trying to emphasize that they're not bargaining from a position of weakness at the table. Leon is absolutely right about Yeltsin's political weakness, but the, the Chechen leadership will have the same problem. They want to show that they are--that they are not giving up. So the hostilities are almost fated to continue here.
MARGARET WARNER: And what about the prospects, if they actually ever do sit down to talk--I mean, Leon just said Yeltsin cannot grant independence. Can the Chechen leader do anything less than press for independence?
MR. SESTANOVICH: Well, the solution of that problem in negotiations is always pretty simple. You have stages. You, you put off the hard questions until later. Both sides have an incentive to do that. Yeltsin doesn't have to end the war, solve the contract, before June. He has to reassure voters that it's on the way to being solved, that he's making every reasonable effort to meet the Chechens and to pacify the situation. He doesn't have to end it, and they don't have to either.
MARGARET WARNER: Leon Aron, how did you interpret what the administration--Clinton administration said today, Tony Lake, the national security adviser, about the Russian offer?
MR. ARON: Well, I, I don't have that text. What did he say?
MARGARET WARNER: What he did saw was that he thought there had been way too much bloodshed, and he applauded what Yeltsin had offered.
MR. ARON: Well, this is a natural response. You know, peace anywhere is better than war anywhere. The administration clearly believes that Yeltsin's chances for reelection will increase if the war is slowed down, as Steve pointed, if not ended. Yeltsin's defeat
at the polls I think would be a very serious issue in our campaign. Who lost Russia to the Communists--
MARGARET WARNER: In our American presidential campaign.
MR. ARON: American presidential campaign--would be very much of a thorn in Clinton's side. So I'm not surprised that, that gesture is welcome. Unfortunately, I don't see what assistance can we lend in practical terms to settle that conflict.
MARGARET WARNER: Well, Steve Sestanovich, there was a meeting between Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin in Cairo last month, and this memo was leaked about it, and there as a big controversy. What was that all about, this discussion they had about helping one another in their elections?
MR. SESTANOVICH: Well, you'll forgive me a little skepticism about this. The big guys get together and they break the ice by offering to be really helpful to each other in this sort of hard-boiled, "tell all" way, but the truth is they don't have much opportunity to really help each other, neither one of them in the other's campaign. What Bill Clinton has done for Boris Yeltsin, he's already pretty much done. He's gotten him a big IMF loan. He's tried to go a little easy on NATO expansion, and he has not given him too hard a time on Chechnya, and those are serious things. This sort of back room talk isn't terribly important.
MARGARET WARNER: Well, let's look at Boris Yeltsin's strategy in this election. How do you see that, Leon Aron? The early punditry was he was going to play to the hard-line, but how has it developed?
MR. ARON: Yeltsin's strategy, I think, is rather predictable. He--it's a two-track policy. On the one hand, he would be trying, I think, almost till the election day to chip away at the left nationalist constituency of the Communists. At the same time, I think as the election approaches, he'll be playing more and more to the center side. See, both center left and center right in Russia are now unoccupied. You have, you have pretty fair division--about a third locked for Communists. I think when all is said and done, a lock, a third is locked for Yeltsin and for reform. The other--the bet was for that third in the middle--the people who may not show up at the polls, in which case I think Yeltsin will certainly be defeated, because the Communist constituency, old Stalinist horses, are very disciplined, and they will come to vote. So I think Yeltsin would be doing things like peace offering in Chechnya. I think even more important in that regard, his land reform act essentially granting the Russians the ownership of the land they now lease or have. Notice that both of those issues were the key planks in Grigory Yavlinsky's program.
MARGARET WARNER: One of the reform parties.
MR. ARON: The reform parties in the middle.
MARGARET WARNER: In the middle.
MR. ARON: And I always believe, and I continue to believe, that there'll be a very serious attempt to make a deal with Yavlinsky, either explicitly or implicitly, so that Yeltsin will get his votes and projections from the second round.
MARGARET WARNER: And we should explain that the first round is strictly for a place in the run-off probably, is that correct, for two, the top two?
MR. ARON: Nobody will get the majority, that's right.
MARGARET WARNER: How do you see his strategy developing?
MR. SESTANOVICH: Well, I think Leon's intuition about the thirds of Russian politics is confirmed by a poll that's going to come out tomorrow in Moscow which shows Zugaynov, the Communist leader, leading Yeltsin 36 to 33 in a run-off. That's a big increase for Yeltsin. What both sides have done now is really consolidate their base. They've got their third, and the issue is who can get the extra margin that will mean victory? Umm, some of the ploys and initiatives that Leon has described are going to be important, uh, but they're not really bread and butter issues, uh, in the same way that some others are. Land, land reform is a promise, and, uh, it may materialize, but it hasn't yet. What Yeltsin has to do most concretely now is live up to a promise which he's actually already broken, that is to pay people back wages by the end of March. His effort to do that--many people haven't been paid for months and months--his effort to do that will be a test of his ability to deliver the goods, but unfortunately, Yeltsin has a very weak government, and he's pushing on the levers of power--
MR. ARON: A very corrupt government.
MR. SESTANOVICH: --but there's very--there's very little in the way of a response. A lot of voters who haven't been paid by June are probably going to vote against their interests and their preferences but just because they're mad and vote against Yeltsin.
MARGARET WARNER: What do you have to add to that?
MR. ARON: Well, I'll say that the prospect of having a Communist as a president is something that concentrates your mind wonderfully, and, uh, I think as we come closer to the elections, Zugaynov's negatives will go up, and Yeltsin--
MARGARET WARNER: The Communist leader's--
MR. ARON: The Communist leader's--and I think we'll, we'll have a fairly evenly matched finale for this presidential campaign.
MARGARET WARNER: But do you agree, Steve Sestanovich, that the marginal candidates will sort of fall away, and you will see this coalescing?
MR. SESTANOVICH: I think after the first round, if it really is Zugaynov and Yeltsin in the first two slots, most other Russian politicians will rally behind Yeltsin. They are going to have their minds concentrated in exactly the way that Leon says. The way
Yeltsin is going to build that coalition I think is less by making specific concessions and deals with 'em and more by framing the issue in very broad terms, that is, do you want the Communists back?
MARGARET WARNER: It certainly sounds like our own election, not by Communists. Well, thank you both very much.
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