November 18, 1999
Web posted at: 3:08 p.m. EST (2008 GMT)

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From staff and wire reports

ISTANBUL, Turkey (CNN) -- Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov made key concessions to the West on Thursday in a European security summit confrontation over Chechnya, agreeing to allow an international role in the effort to resolve the conflict in the rebel republic.

Earlier, Russian President Boris Yeltsin stormed out of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Istanbul and returned to Moscow, saying the West had no right to criticize Russia's military offensive against Islamic militants in Chechnya.

"President Yeltsin came to this meeting with his goal to explain his view of what was going on," U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said. "When he was here, he heard from others who saw it differently."

After long negotiations on the summit's Chechnya-dominated first day, foreign ministers came to an agreement on the wording of the summit's final declaration pertaining to the region, Albright said.

"What we managed to do was to recognize the territorial integrity of Russia and to condemn terrorism, but also to make quite clear that there needed to be respect for OSCE norms, that there had to be and could be humanitarian assistance ... that we agreed that a political solution was necessary, and that the OSCE could assist," the secretary of state said.

At the OSCE summit's opening session earlier in the day, Yeltsin soundly rejected international criticism of Russia's military push.

"You have no right to criticize Russia for Chechnya," a robust Yeltsin said at the opening session. "We are obliged to put an end to the spread of the cancer of terrorism."

He later walked out, breaking off talks with French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder after five minutes, and returned to Moscow two hours earlier than planned. An aide said Yeltsin left because of the delay in signing the OSCE charter -- delayed because of the disagreement over the wording.

"Some participants are trying to put formulas unacceptable to Russia, including on Chechnya, into the declaration," said Ivanov, left behind by Yeltsin to handle negotiations.

Yeltsin met with U.S. President Bill Clinton before the aborted meeting with Chirac and Schroeder. The Russian president was "very vigorous and so was I," said Clinton, who has been calling for a negotiated end to the Russian campaign.

Russia lost any effective control over Chechnya, a breakaway republic in the northern Caucasus, in the aftermath of a 1994-1996 war that had little popular support in Russia.

The Chechen situation simmered in the background until this summer, when Islamic rebels twice invaded the Russian republic of Dagestan from Chechnya. Russian troops drove the Chechens out of Dagestan both times, following them back into Chechnya after the second invasion in September.

Relentless Russian air and artillery attacks on Chechnya-- which have reportedly killed thousands of civilians and forced more than 200,000 to flee the republic -- are the wrong way of facing the problems Russia perceives, Western leaders said.

"If the attacks on civilians continue, the extremism Russia is trying to combat will only intensify," Clinton told the 54-nation summit meeting.

And the campaign could backfire, Clinton said, prompting "ordinary Chechens who are not part of the terror or the resistance" to reject Russian rule.

Russia also blames the rebels for deadly bombings in Russian cities, although both the rebels and the Chechens deny any responsibility for those attacks.

• Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia signed an agreement on the summit sidelines to build a gigantic oil pipeline to carry Caspian oil to international markets without going through Russia or Iran.
  
  
• Turkish riot police broke up an anti-American protest as the summit began, detaining at least 10 demonstrators. More protesters were arrested near the hotel where Clinton is staying in Istanbul.
  
  
• Serbian opposition leaders at an Istanbul news conference called on the West to end sanctions against Yugoslavia to boost the opposition's credibility and bring down Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic more quickly. At the summit, Western leaders offered Yugoslavia substantial economic aid to institute democratic reforms and "rejoin your European family."

Correspondents Chris Burns and John King and The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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