Why are you posting uninformed, half-digested propaganda? Do you have an agenda, or are you just an idiot?
--- Michael Givel <mgivel at earthlink.net> wrote:
> "Many of our colleagues didn't make it here. They
> were arrested, removed
> from trains, or beaten."
>
>
>
>
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13831347/print/1/displaymode/1098/
>
> MSNBC.com
>
>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Democracy activists accuse Putin of repression
>
> By Neil Buckley in Moscow
>
> Financial Times
>
> Updated: 9:12 p.m. CT July 12, 2006 Opposition and
> civil society leaders
> in Russia on Wednesday called on leaders of the
> Group of Eight to demand
> that President Vladimir Putin end a "campaign of
> political repression"
> against opponents.
>
> In an open letter to heads of state and government
> meeting in St
> Petersburg this weekend, participants in a
> pro-democracy conference in
> Moscow said dozens of delegates had been detained on
> their way to the
> meeting.
>
> "The authorities now have started repression,"
> Mikhail Kasyanov,
> Russia's former prime minister turned opposition
> presidential candidate,
> told the conference - the broadest meeting of
> Kremlin opponents during
> Mr Putin's presidency. "Many of our colleagues
> didn't make it here. They
> were arrested, removed from trains, or beaten."
>
> The comments came as Mr Putin charged in four
> television interviews
> ahead of the G8 summit starting on Saturday that
> some international
> partners were using the issue of democracy to try to
> influence Russian
> internal affairs. He called the west's focus on
> democratisation a form
> or "neocolonialism" or "remnant of cold war
> thinking".
>
> In a swipe at Dick Cheney, the US vice-president who
> recently criticised
> Russia's record on democracy, Mr Putin told
> America's NBC the remarks
> had been an "unsuccessful hunting shot" - referring
> to the shotgun blast
> by Mr Cheney that accidentally wounded a companion.
>
> The verbal clashes set the scene for a potentially
> tricky three-day
> summit, at least behind the scenes, in Russia's
> second city. Visiting
> heads of state and government must balance desire
> for progress on
> multilateral issues with the risk of being seen to
> endorse what
> opponents say are the Kremlin's increasingly
> hardline policies.
>
> In a piece of delicate diplomatic footwork, US
> President George W.?Bush
> will on Friday meet civil society leaders from
> across Russia in St
> Petersburg - before meeting Mr Putin, where the two
> may reach a
> long-awaited agreement on Russian entry to the World
> Trade
> Organisation.
>
> Pro-democracy campaigners will also rally in St
> Petersburg following the
> two-day conference in Moscow which brought under one
> roof a diverse
> collection of speakers. They included Andrei
> Illarionov, Mr Putin's
> former chief economic adviser, Lyudmila Alexeeva, a
> Soviet-era dissident
> and human rights activist, and Eduard Limonov, head
> of the radical
> National Bolshevik party.
>
> Speakers highlighted what they called the lack of
> media freedom and an
> independent judiciary in Russia, and complained of
> manipulation of the
> political process by a small elite within or linked
> to the Kremlin which
> now controlled much of the country's natural
> resource wealth.
>
> Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion who
> organised the event,
> said nearly 50 activists had been arrested or
> detained on their way to
> Moscow or the St Petersburg rally. Some faced
> charges of terrorism or
> drug possession, he added. The claims could not be
> independently
> verified.
>
> "Systematic repression against the Russian
> opposition has
> become...the prelude to the G8 summit," conference
> participants said
> in their letter to G8 leaders. "It is apparent to us
> that this campaign
> is centralised, and by all means sanctioned, by the
> political leadership
> of our country."
>
> Several G8 officials or diplomats defied an earlier
> warning from Igor
> Shuvalov, a senior aide to Mr Putin and Russia's G8
> "sherpa", that
> attending the Moscow conference would be seen as an
> "unfriendly
> gesture".
>
> Tony Brenton, British ambassador to Moscow,
> addressed the meeting
> yesterday where he was interrupted by a pro-Kremlin
> heckler. Daniel
> Fried, US assistant secretary of state for European
> and Eurasian
> affairs, who was also present, noted that if Russian
> officials attended
> a US opposition meeting "we wouldn't regard it as
> anything other than
> doing their job".
>
> Political analysts say Russia's G8 presidency is
> less important for Mr
> Putin's domestic audience. But they say the Russian
> president is anxious
> to win international recognition of Russia's role as
> a world player.
>
> "The Russian leadership is seeking legitimisation
> from the west for its
> political course," Lilia Shevtsova of the Moscow
> Carnegie Center
> think-tank told yesterday's conference. "But we have
> to realise that
> western influence [on Russia] is now very minimal,
> it's very limited."
>
> Copyright The Financial Times Ltd. All rights
> reserved. URL:
> http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13831347/
>
>
>
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