Beslan's mothers to blame Putin for their loss
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-08-31 21:47

Beslan's bereaved mothers will tell Russian President Vladimir Putin he is to blame for the death of their children and that unless lessons are learned from official blundering the tragedy could be repeated.

Susanna Dudiyeva, whose 12-year-old son Zaurbek was among 331 people, half of them children, killed after Chechen rebels seized their school in southern Russia, said late on Tuesday her grief gave her the right to speak frankly to Putin.

She and the Beslan Mothers' Committee she leads will tell him in the Kremlin on September 2 -- a year and a day on from the start of the siege -- that official incompetence that made the bloodshed worse is being covered up, she said.

"I will say that we think President Putin is to blame for what happened. As for what else I will say, well I am unpredictable and I can't tell the exact words I will use but it will be serious," she said in the group's office, where black-clad women meet daily to discuss their plans.

For a year, Beslan residents have demanded a meeting with Putin to ask how the tense stand-off collapsed into a bloody gunfight and inferno on September 3.

The meeting is unusual because Putin usually steers clear of potentially embarrassing public encounters with angry voters. Ordinary Russians he does meet are almost always deferential.

Putin visited Beslan immediately after the bloodshed but arrived at night, stayed a few hours and spent most of the time in meetings with officials.

The mothers also want to complain about the incompetence they say allowed Chechen rebels to drive to their small town from Chechnya along Russia's most heavily-guarded roads.

Shamil Basayev, the Chechen warlord who says he organised the raid, said late on Tuesday security forces allowed his fighters to reach Beslan as part of an ambush planned by Russian intelligence that went wrong. Officials rejected his version.

"THE PRICE OF OUR CHILDREN'S LIVES"

"We have the right to speak out. Our right to speak out was forced on us. We got this right at the price of our children's lives," said Dudiyeva, slim and pale in her mourning outfit of black dress and headscarf.

An opinion poll published on Wednesday by Levada-Centre, a polling organisation, said half of the Russians questioned share the Beslan mothers' view that officials mishandled the response.

But there has been very little political fallout for Putin, who enjoys consistently high levels of popularity and has overseen a booming economy fuelled by high oil prices.

The siege followed other hostage-takings by Chechen rebels fighting a 10-year war to end Moscow's rule over their homeland, which borders the North Ossetia region that includes Beslan.

The Beslan mothers say the other raids, notably the Nord-Ost theatre siege in Moscow in 2002 and the Budyonnovsk hostage-taking in 1995 -- which each cost more than a hundred lives -- brought no reforms.

They want their loss to be the last.

"I think that if after this, after our visit, nothing changes, like nothing changed after Nord-Ost or Budyonnovsk ... then we will know that nothing is going to change and that we will have to do it all for ourselves," she said.

"We know about happiness, and we know about unhappiness. Maybe the president -- he has two children himself -- only knows about happiness. We will show him what unhappiness is," Dudiyeva said. "We will be saying what needs to be said."

Several of the group's members objected to the date Putin had chosen for the meeting, saying it was an intrusion on their mourning to meet on the anniversary of the tragedy.

"(Putin) is showing his arrogance," Ella Kisayeva, who lost two nephews and a son-in-law in the siege, said.

"But ... this might be our last chance. We treat our presidents like gods or tsars but they are also people and they have to answer for their mistakes."

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