MOSCOW -- The U.S. will include a number of Chechen groups on its official list of terrorist organizations, an American move that will please Moscow at
a time when its support is being sought for a U.S.-led war against Iraq.
To this end, the Bush administration has attempted to mollify Moscow by siding with it on Chechnya.
A senior U.S. diplomat said Washington was "very close" to a decision to designate two or three Chechen groups as terrorist organizations while keeping others under review. He said the decision reflected "the evolving body of evidence that these groups are drawing support from international terrorist networks."
Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian parliament's foreign-affairs committee and a leading pro-Putin politician, said such a "friendly step" couldn't help but have an "indirect effect" on Russia's position on Iraq.
"The Russian public will be relieved that the U.S. finally seems to understand the challenges we face in Chechnya," he said. The listing would be a propaganda coup for Moscow, which has long argued that the rebels it is fighting in Chechnya aren't independence-minded separatists but Islamic terrorists linked to al Qaeda.
Even before the U.S. moves on Chechnya there were signs President Vladimir Putin might be preparing Russian public opinion for a shift on Iraq. A permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, Russia's official line is that there is no need for a resolution authorizing an attack on Iraq as long as it continues to cooperate with international inspectors.
But in a recent speech in Kiev, Mr. Putin said Russia might support "tougher" resolutions if Iraq obstructed the inspections. Later, Foreign Minister Igor
Ivanov urged Saddam Hussein to cooperate more actively with the U.N. and provide proof it had dismantled weapons stocks disclosed by previous inspections during the 1990s.
Russia continues, however, to hedge its bets. Mr. Putin met German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Berlin on Sunday and also will meet French President Jacques Chirac in Paris, discussing Iraq with the two fiercest opponents of U.S. military action against Baghdad.
Russia is pulled in different directions over Iraq, an ally from Soviet times, concerned the overthrow of Mr. Hussein could deprive it of lucrative oil contracts yet fearful that a tough antiwar stand could undermine the flourishing relationship with the U.S. in which Mr. Putin has invested so much of his political capital.
As a result of this tension, Russia been much less vocal in its opposition to war than France and Germany, while continuing to press the U.S. for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. "It's quite comfortable for them to be somewhere in the middle," the senior U.S. diplomat said.
But Washington clearly feels when it comes to the crunch, Russia will acquiesce to U.S. plans for an attack. "Our sense is that the Russians want to end up on a harmonious footing with us and they don't want [the Iraq crisis] to have any serious effects on U.S.-Russian relations," the diplomat
said.
The U.S. has made other gestures to win Russian goodwill. In his speech to the U.N. last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell said a terrorist network
led by Abu Mussah al-Zarqawi, an alleged al Qaeda leader said to be harbored
by Iraq, had plotted terrorist actions in Russia and other European countries. Mr. Powell said Mr. Zarqawi's associates had been active in Chechnya and in the Pankisi Gorge, a lawless region of Georgia that borders Russia .