Posted Sunday, September 12, 2004; 10.21 BST
Russian President Vladimir Putin has steadfastly refused to negotiate with Chechen extremists. But a TIME reconstruction of the events leading up to the slaughter at Beslan's School No. 1 suggests that the Kremlin might have had a chance to defuse the standoff if it had moved quickly to enlist the aid of intermediaries, especially moderate Chechen separatist leaders. Did the authorities miss an opportunity to avoid bloodshed?
One potential mediator was Anna Politkovskaya, a columnist with Moscow's Novaya Gazeta, who in 2002 served as an intermediary during the Moscow theater siege. On her way to Beslan on Sept. 1, the first day of the siege, she phoned Akhmed Zakayev, the spokesman for rebel Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov in London, and urged him to ask Maskhadov to intercede with the terrorists. Zakayev agreed, and they arranged to be in touch when Politkovskaya arrived in Beslan. But she never made it. During the flight, her tea was apparently poisoned and she lost consciousness. Back in Moscow, but still not fully recovered, she alleges that security agents "neutralized me because they knew I was going there to set up talks."
Shortly after seizing the school, the terrorists, who were demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya, sent word to the Russians that they wanted to negotiate with a group of four senior officials, including North Ossetia's President, Alexander Dzasokhov. Dzasokhov was in Beslan and wanted to go to the school, but was stopped. Dzasokhov told TIME that "a very high-ranking general from the Interior Ministry said, 'I have received orders to arrest you if you try to go'" — possibly out of concern that he would be taken hostage. Yet Dzasokhov added that he later spoke with Putin "two or three times a day," and Putin "emphasized we should not let slip any chance to save the hostages." Meanwhile, the Kremlin told broadcasters not to repeat the hostage takers' demands.
On Sept. 2, Zakayev says he received orders from Maskhadov "to do everything possible to save the children. We were both horrified at this atrocity and knew it was the worst blow possible for our cause." He got a call from Dzasokhov, asking how helpful Maskhadov was willing to be. According to Taymuraz Mansurov, chairman of the North Ossetian parliament, who was present at the Beslan command center, that call and others to Maskhadov's camp were placed by officials of the Federal Security Service, strongly suggesting they had Putin's approval. Involving Maskhadov was an unprecedented move. Later that day, former Ingushetia President Ruslan Aushev got into the school and arranged the release of 26 mothers and babies.
On Sept. 3, Zakayev got another call from Dzasokhov, who wanted Maskhadov to come to Beslan personally to negotiate. Zakayev said Maskhadov would do so if "maximum conditions" for his safety were guaranteed. "That's fair," Zakayev recalls Dzasokhov as saying. "I have been discussing that since yesterday. I need two more hours to work out the details." But time was up. Forty minutes later a bomb went off in the school, apparently by accident, and the carnage began.
Could it have turned out differently? Dzasokhov told TIME that "we would have been willing to enter into contact with Maskhadov." (Yet last week the Kremlin put a $10 million bounty on Maskhadov's head.) He said he had offered concessions — a corridor for the terrorists to pull out and freedom for some imprisoned Ingush guerrillas — but got no answer from inside the school. Looking drawn and tired the day after an angry mob of 3,000 gathered outside his office to demand his resignation, he mused, "As long as I live, I will be playing this over in my mind."
Reported by Paul Quinn-Judge/ Vladikavkaz and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow
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