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The report concludes that it is essential for the inquiry into the mass grave to be resumed, and that a special international commission should be created as a matter of urgency. Its first task will be to exhume the 34 hastily reburied unidentified bodies under the supervision of the International Red Cross, the OSCE Support Group, experts from the Council of Europe, and representatives of the UN Commission on Human Rights.

In order to understand what was behind the reactions of the Kremlin and Secretary-General Annan to all this, let us take a look at what is going on in the United Nations in spring 2001, primarily as regards Kofi Annan himself. We need to establish whether it is in principle possible to have an international protectorate in Chechnya under the aegis of the United Nations, and what the powers of the Secretary-General are.

It is worth mentioning that before anything was heard of the Human Rights Watch report, or any scandal had been raised in relation to it, Novaya gazeta was already trying to get answers to these questions in New York and, moreover, directly from UN headquarters. We were doing so in highly diplomatic, terribly behind-the-scenes centers of power, namely, the Security Council’s lounge where so-called international humanitarian policy is cooked up. Needless to say, Novaya gazeta’s correspondent was conducted to this privileged enclave, which is shielded from prying eyes, and introduced to the right people “unofficially.” I am immensely grateful to the person who acceded to my request, because he knew exactly the questions I wanted to raise and the real purpose of my raid on the Security Council: to discover what the United Nations could do to resolve the dreadful crisis in Chechnya.

My view, arrived at after discussing dozens of approaches to a peaceful settlement of the conflict with hundreds of people living in Chechnya – ordinary people and people in various official positions, people in Grozny and in villages, in the valleys and the mountains – is clear: given the way the situation has evolved up to the present, it is impossible to get by without an international protectorate. Third-party involvement is imperative. It is needed to temporarily separate the parties to the conflict, and today these parties are not by any means the resistance fighters and federal forces, as official Kremlin propaganda would have us believe. The conflict is between the federals and the civilian population. Intervention is needed to cool passions as far as possible, and to move towards a softening of positions.

But let us return to the UN in Manhattan. Most of the UN Security Council diplomats I questioned agreed that it would be practically impossible to get a resolution passed. Before the Security Council can mandate peacekeeping troops, the consent of both sides in a conflict must be obtained. In this case, the civilian population of Chechnya, daily bearing the brunt of violations of their human rights, cannot be recognised under UN definitions as such a party to a conflict. As for obtaining the consent of the Russian Government, that is out of the question.

There is, however, another approach for obtaining a UN mandate for peace enforcement, and it was under this protocol that events in Iraq and Yugoslavia proceeded, which later entailed major unpleasantness for the United States when it lost its place on the UN Commission on Human Rights. If we could have the Chechen crisis considered in terms of peace enforcement, the Security Council diplomats assured me, there would be no need to obtain the consent of the parties to the conflict.

But Iraq and Yugoslavia are not Russia. They are only members of the United Nations, while Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council and holds a veto. A decision under Article 7 [which covers crimes against humanity] is taken by the Security Council, and this meant that while such proposals could be introduced, the result, after protracted discussion, would be a foregone conclusion dependent on the viewpoint of the