President Clinton must continue to press Russian President Vladimir V. Putin to hold accountable perpetrators of gross abuses in Chechnya, Human Rights Watch said.
In a letter to President Clinton, the international monitoring group urged that he raise Russia's obligations to create a credible justice process for abuse in Chechnya, in line with an April United Nations Commission for Human Rights resolution. In a separate memorandum sent to President Clinton, Human Rights Watch detailed Russian failures to implement the resolution, which had called for a national commission of inquiry to investigate abuses with a view to eventual prosecutions.
The letter set out four critical items President Clinton should raise with President Putin:
a transparent and thorough process of accountability for all violations;
access to Chechnya for U.N. special human rights mechanisms and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights;
redeployment of the OSCE Assistance Group to Chechnya; and
a clearly defined timetable for achieving these benchmarks.
