CZECH REPUBLIC/RUSSIA: Mr Vaclav Havel, the former dissident playwright and Czech president, led a list of luminaries to criticise Kremlin leader Mr Vladimir Putin yesterday, in a letter that lambasted the former KGB spy for threatening Russia's neighbours and undermining democracy.
The letter was sent to leaders of all European Union and Nato member states, and echoed strong recent criticism of Mr Putin across the old Communist bloc for using a spate of terror attacks blamed on Chechen rebels as a pretext for limiting basic freedoms.
"We are deeply concerned that these tragic events are being used to further undermine democracy in Russia," the letter said.
"Russia's democratic institutions have always been weak and fragile. Since becoming president in January 2000, Vladimir Putin has made them even weaker."
Signatories of the letter, which was released by Mr Havel's office in Prague, included senior US senators Mr John McCain, a Republican, Democrat Mr Joseph Biden; former CIA chief Mr James Woolsey; former Swedish premier Mr Carl Bildt and former US Ambassador to the United Nations, Mr Richard Holbrooke.
Almost 450 people died in an unprecedented month of violence in Russia, when two airliners were blown up, a suicide bomber attacked central Moscow and gunmen seized the school in Beslan, ending in a bloody shootout on September 3rd.
Afterwards, Mr Putin vowed a tougher crackdown on Chechen separatists and ruled out any talks with their leaders.
He also announced that regional governors would now be nominated by the Kremlin rather than elected and that parliamentary polls would operate solely on a party-list basis, dramatically reducing the chances for independent politicians to win seats.
Civil rights groups also accuse Mr Putin's administration - whose supporters dominate parliament - of putting pressure on Russia's dwindling independent media to toe the Kremlin line on controversial issues like the war in Chechnya.
The letter expressed sympathy and solidarity with Russia in its fight against terror, but urged the West to play a greater role in nurturing democracy and civil society in the world's largest country.
"All too often in the past, the West has remained silent and restrained its criticism in the belief that President Putin's steps in the wrong direction were temporary and the hope that Russia soon would return to a democratic pro-Western path," they said.
"The leaders of the West must recognise that our current strategy toward Russia is failing. We must speak the truth about what is happening in Russia. We owe it to the victims of Beslan and the tens of thousands of Russian democrats who are still fighting to preserve democracy and human freedom in their country."
The letter also said Mr Putin's Russia was characterised by "a threatening attitude towards Russia's neighbours and the return of (the) rhetoric of militarism and empire."
The sentiment was mirrored by a furious reaction in the Polish press to allegations by Mr Putin that Warsaw's media was "the most anti-Russian in the world" in the aftermath of the Beslan siege.
"Those who remember the era of stagnation under (Soviet leader Leonid) Brezhnev know very well this language of insinuation and threats," wrote Mr Adam Michnik, another former dissident, in the leading daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.
The Rzeczpospolita newspaper said Moscow was apparently struggling to comprehend that its former satellite states were now independent nations and confident new members of the EU and Nato.
"The Russians often remark that they do not consider us as equal partners. Sometimes the Kremlin does not hide its anger at what it sees as an overly independent policy of Warsaw," the newspaper declared.