Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

UN poised to condemn Russia attacks
Wed 1 September, 2004 17:20

Whether occurring in war, occupation or a terrorist attack anytime children are the victims the crime becomes even more dastardly. In this instance given the premeditation and number of children involved this is not only morally inapprehensible but a bad mistake on the part of the terrorists.

-Am


UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council has called an emergency meeting, at the request of Russian Ambassador Andrei Denisov, to discuss a wave of deadly terrorist attacks in Russia.

The 15-nation council planned to convene at 5 p.m. (10:00 p.m. British time) on Wednesday and was expected to issue a statement at the meeting's close condemning the attacks as a threat to international peace and security, council diplomats said.

Russia is one of the council's five permanent members, along with the United States, Britain, France and China.

The call for a special session came after a heavily armed gang seized a school in southern Russia and took hostage up to 400 people, including many children, in what appeared to be a Chechen rebel operation.

A day earlier, a female suicide bomber blew herself up in central Moscow, killing 10 people and injuring 51. And on August 24, two passenger planes were downed, apparently by bombs, killing 90 people.

The request for a special Security Council meeting appeared unusual given Moscow's dogged insistence for years that its war in Chechnya was an internal problem which Russia would solve by itself.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted by Tass as saying in Moscow that the wave of terrorist attacks "shows that the process of stabilization in Chechnya is not to the liking of international terrorists."

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=575174§ion=news