By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
The Moscow Times

The Kremlin's chief spokesman on Chechnya said Monday that the government will closely follow Radio Liberty's coverage of the conflict and may revoke the U.S.-funded station's license to broadcast in Russia if it sees the programming as pro-separatist.

Sergei Yastrzhembsky's warning appeared to be Russia's answer to renewed Western criticism of the military campaign and particularly to demands from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe last week to begin negotiations with Aslan Maskhadov's government.

In an interview published Monday in Gazeta newspaper, Yastrzhembsky said that, given the history of Radio Liberty's "biased" coverage of the Chechnya war, the government was "wary" of its plans to begin broadcasting in Chechen and other languages of the North Caucasus.

"We still remember Andrei Babitsky's reporting," Yastrzhembsky said in regard to the Radio Liberty reporter whose arrest by federal troops in Chechnya in early 2000 created a scandal. "We think that he justified the Chechen gunmen's reprisals against Russian servicemen," Yastrzhembsky said.

Andrei Sharyi, head of the Moscow bureau of Radio Liberty's Russian service, dismissed Yastrzhembsky's accusations of a pro-separatist bias as "ungrounded" and said the editorial policy will not change.

"The position of the Russian service on the Chechnya war has always been the same: calls for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, defense of human rights and [coverage of] humanitarian issues," Sharyi said in a phone interview. "There will be no changes in our position."

Yastrzhembsky said the government will monitor Radio Liberty's broadcasts for content, tone, selection of newsmakers and frequency with which wanted men appear on the air. If the coverage incites religious or ethnic hostility or justifies terrorism, the station will be dealt with "according to the law," he said. The law, he noted, provides for an official warning from the Press Ministry and, if the warning is not heeded, withdrawal of the broadcast license.

The U.S. Congress's decision in 2000 to begin Radio Liberty broadcasts in Chechen, Avar (Dagestan) and Circassian (one of two main languages in Karachayevo-Cherkessia) has irritated the Russian government since it was first made public last February. Press Minister Mikhail Lesin said then that the planned broadcasts were driven by political motives and would "create special national autonomy on the radio waves."

Radio Liberty's Russian service has distanced itself from the decision from the start. Sharyi reiterated Monday that the Russian service, which has had a license to broadcast in Russia since 1991, will have nothing to do with the North Caucasus service.

Sonia Winter, a spokeswoman for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, said programs for the North Caucasus service will be produced in Prague. She said she did not know where they would be transmitted from.

At least in the beginning, the broadcasts will be less than two hours a day in all three languages combined, Winter said. "There isn't really much to get excited about," she said.

Winter said she had not read Yastrzhembsky's statement and therefore could not comment on it. Yet she stressed that RFE/RL will approach its North Caucasus service with its usual high standards. "We will strive to bring objectivity and comprehensiveness of information to our broadcasts," she said.

RFE/RL is not free to choose the languages it broadcasts in, she said. The decision is made by Congress.

Winter said the North Caucasus service is set to begin in late February, not this week as Yastrzhembsky stated. She said the mix-up may have been caused by information that RFE/RL was launching its Afghan service Wednesday.

RFE/RL broadcasts in 30 languages. Since 1953, when the Russian service was launched, Radio Liberty has also broadcast in Tatar and Bashkir.

Russian officials have suggested that the decision to broadcast in some North Caucasus languages and not others may further destabilize the region. Although Avar is the second most popular language in the region after Chechen, it is only one of several dominant languages in Dagestan, where there is an internal struggle for power, mainly between Avars and Dargins.

When asked about possible repercussions for the Russian service, Winter said she hoped there would be none. "I'd hope we'd have amicable relations [with the Russian government]," she said, while adding that occasional conflicts with governments are nothing new. "If all governments liked what we said, we wouldn't be doing our job."

Radio Liberty broadcasts in Russia on a medium-wave frequency on the basis of a special 1991 decree signed by then-President Boris Yeltsin. Its current license expires in 2005 and can only be revoked by presidential decree.

In his question-and-answer interview published in Gazeta, Yastrzhembsky spoke at length about the change in the West's stance on Chechnya in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the willingness of some Western officials to acknowledge a connection between Chechen separatists and al-Qaida.

He said Russia will link Radio Liberty's policy to Russian-U.S. relations. "One should remember that Radio Liberty's budget is approved by Congress and its management is confirmed by the [U.S.] president," he was quoted as saying. "We hope that the people who do the broadcasts will remember this and will not create additional problems in Russian-U.S. relations."

The questions in the Gazeta (www.gzt.ru) interview, almost all of them leading, sound as if they had been written in Yastrzhembsky's office. Every question is effectively the interrogative form of the official statement made by Yastrzhembsky.

A Radio Liberty official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the station considers Yastrzhembsky's statement to be a propagandistic counterattack to PACE's meetings with representatives of the Chechen rebels last week in Strasbourg, France. "It has nothing to do with journalism," the official said.

PACE adopted a resolution last Thursday calling for a negotiated solution to the conflict and saying that the participation of Maskhadov or his representatives was the key to the success of any peace talks. PACE also reprimanded Russia over continuing human rights violations.

Yastrzhembsky said the demand to begin negotiations with Maskhadov was "an attempt to blow the Chechnya issue out of proportion." Yet he and other Russian officials have praised the PACE resolution as balanced.

Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Federation Council's foreign relations committee, said Monday that PACE's attention to Chechnya "forces Europe to have a more adequate and objective evaluation of what is happening there."

Yastrzhembsky criticized the resolution for citing the Geneva Convention on protection of civilians in time of war, implying that the Chechnya conflict is a war between two states and thus indirectly recognizing Chechnya's independence. "This is not a conflict between states, but a counterterrorist operation, carried out by the federal authorities on the territory of their country," Interfax quoted him as saying Thursday.