Putin out of favour with EU comrades

By CATHERINE FIELD

PARIS - The Beslan hostage crisis has unleashed what could be the start of a rethink of Europe's ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Previously seen as sharp-minded but enigmatic, Putin's image since the bloodbath in North Ossetia has undergone a dramatic transformation in Europe where some are painting him as brutal, clumsy and autocratic.

Questions are now being asked - not only about his Government's handling of the crisis in which hundreds of abducted schoolchildren and their parents were slaughtered in a shoot-out between troops and hostage-takers - but also about his policy in the powder-keg region that straddles southern Russia and northwest Asia.

Many European newspapers are deeply critical of Russian stonewalling about key aspects of the tragedy.

They have demanded to know who the hostage-takers were and what their aims were, why the building was stormed and whether the Russian authorities had been intent on negotiating.

And many have deepening concerns over the West's silence about Russia's hegemony in the Caucasus, where for the past decade the only critical voices have been those of human rights groups.

"Why is Vladimir Putin so vigorously supported by the Western capitals?" the French daily Le Monde asked. "And why do they refrain, in the name of silent solidarity, from asking simple questions about Russia's policy in the Caucasus?"

Putin had closed the door on dialogue in Chechnya and other regions that wanted to bolt from Russia's rule and another bloody crackdown there was inevitable, Le Monde predicted darkly.

The Berliner Zeitung daily took aim at the failure of Russia's Government-controlled media and toothless legislature to ask searching questions about the hostage drama.

Putin's steely grip on both had exposed a "pre-democratic state", it said.

Some European politicians have also started to distance themselves from Putin who, in any case, had no big buddy in Europe as he supposedly has in President George W. Bush.

Leaders have bitterly condemned the hostage-takers and voiced deep sorrow at the loss of lives. But none has congratulated Putin for his handling of the crisis or even sympathised with him for its outcome.

None has echoed his contention that "international terrorism" was to blame - an implication that Middle East Islamists were involved. The Russian authorities have said 10 "Arabs" were among the hostage-takers but as of yesterday no evidence had been produced to back this.

Some leaders have gone further, urging the Russians to cast aside the veil of secrecy.

French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, while expressing his people's "solidarity in the face of this terrorist act" said: "We also wish to have all the necessary information" about the climax.

Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot, whose country at present chairs the European Union, said the EU wanted to "know from Russian authorities how this tragedy could have happened", a challenge that Moscow furiously branded as "insolent, odious and deeply offensive".

Bot was backed up by the EU executive, the European Commission and the Council of Europe, a Strasbourg-based assembly on human rights.

Diplomats in Brussels say Bot's tough words - which he later claimed had been misinterpreted - had been requested by former Soviet Baltic states Lithuania and Latvia, which joined the EU on May 1.

If so, that points to an intriguing shift within the 25-nation EU that is likely to be far tougher on Russia.

Other EU newcomers are Estonia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, all of which struggled for decades to free themselves of Moscow's control.