From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 6/28/2006 12:04 AM Wednesday, June 28, 2006
ICRC urges Putin to help on Chechen prison visits
GENEVA: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to break a deadlock and allow it to resume visits to detainees captured in the Chechen conflict. The agency, which suspended visits in September 2004 saying its standard conditions were not being fully met, said that ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger had written to Putin because “negotiations have failed” since then. It had registered 3,212 detainees, the majority Chechens, in Russian prisons at the time, according to the ICRC. “Mr. Kellenberger is deeply concerned but remains convinced that the ICRC’s activities in the Russian Federation - especially its visits to detainees - respond to a real need in humanitarian terms and play a constructive role ...” it said in a statement. Kellenberger, a former senior Swiss diplomat, offered to go to Moscow to discuss future cooperation with Putin, it added. “We are seeking to relaunch negotiations,” Jerome Sorg, deputy head of ICRC operations in Eastern Europe, including the Russian Federation and northern Caucasus, told a news briefing. A high-level meeting could unblock the situation, he said. The Swiss-based agency is mandated to monitor whether prison conditions and treatment of detainees comply with the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which lay down rules on the treatment of those captured in armed conflicts. Reuters http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\06\28\story_28-6-2006_pg4_4
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