Western nations must pressure Russia to start peace talks with Chechnya to avoid more atrocities like the bloody Beslan school siege, an aide to the region's main separatist leader said today.
"If the world continues to ignore the Chechen problem, the responsibility for the ensuing Caucasus catastrophe will fall at the feet of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and his western apologists," Mr Zakayev, a spokesman for Chechen leader Mr Aslan Maskhadov, said.
This month's hostage-taking by Chechen rebels in southern Russia ended in over 300 deaths, half of them children. Mr Akhmed Zakayev said a political solution to the crisis in Chechnya was possible if western states intervened.
Western governments had turned a blind eye to human rights abuses in Chechnya, where separatists have been fighting Russia for 10 years, said Mr Zakayev, who has lived in London since receiving asylum last year.
The West should make peace talks between Russia and Chechnya a condition of the former superpower's trading and political relations with the rest of the world, he said.
"If Putin's policy towards Chechnya continues in the same vein . . . I am gravely concerned that more Beslans will be inevitable," he added.
Moscow blames Mr Maskhadov and warlord Mr Shamil Basayev for Chechen-related violence, including Beslan.
Mr Maskhadov, who has been on the run since being ousted as Chechen president by Russian forces in 1999, is a relative moderate among Chechen separatists who has denied involvement in Beslan and has sought to distance himself from Mr Basayev.
Mr Zakayev, who said the warlord should not be allowed to the negotiating table, signalled compromises on both sides may be possible in talks.