LETTER : Moscow farce ignores Chechnya's fate

From Mr Victor Fainberg

and others

Sir: Fifty foreign leaders, with many heads of state among them, have been in Moscow celebrating the victory over fascism. Out of consideration for these visitors, the Russian government has declared an interruption to hostilities during the celebrations, delaying the "final solution" of the Chechnyan question by two weeks.

We cannot prevent the heads of state from making use of this hospitality surreptitiously to bring about the recognition and acceptance of genocide. Their decision may well be the zenith of that "realpolitik", which has had such catastrophic results in the Balkans and in Africa.

But they should know that when they condone the latest bloody farce now being performed in the Kremlin, they become accomplices to the crime. We are convinced that the overwhelming majority of the citizens of the countries they claim to represent wants nothing to do with profaning the memory of the victims of fascism - neither in its old, nor in its modern version - or with offending the Russian people, embroiled in a colonial war against their will, or with an indecent mockery of the sufferings of the heroic people of Chechnya.

At this feast in a time of plague, they represent no one but themselves and their policy, and their place in history's judgement will be alongside that of Chamberlain and Daladier.

Yours faithfully,

VICTOR FAINBERG, NATALIE GORBANEVSKAYA, VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY, PAVEL LITVINOV, OLGA IOFFE, IRINA DELONE, LEONID PLYUSHCH, BERNARD HENRI LEVY, JEAN-JACQUES DE FELICE

Paris

9 May