|
|
|
Under the headline "Turkish March", the paper says the summit "has brought the West and Russia up against a barrier which could become a dividing line worse than the Berlin Wall or the Iron Curtain".
"Contemporary Russia", the paper says, "had an unenviable role in Istanbul. It was on trial. Europe had plenty to say. Europe no longer has Kosovo, but it does have Chechnya now.
"To some extent the Istanbul summit could not have taken place without Russia. What else would replete and haughty Europe have had to talk about?
"The victorious war in Kosovo is over, justice has prevailed, as it were. What else has European officialdom got to occupy itself with other than mysterious, unpredictable and hardy Russia?"
'No public whipping'
The business newspaper Kommersant, which leads with a report headlined "The president accomplished everything", and the mass-circulation Komsomolskaya Pravda, take a different line.
Komsomolskaya Pravda focuses on the new lease of life which Russian President Boris Yeltsin has been displaying of late.
Its article on the Istanbul summit begins: "President Yeltsin knows how to surprise the world - and his own country!
"When he arrived in Istanbul, everybody saw an extremely cheerful and energetic politician who is determined to have his own way, having left his physical and political ailments behind in Moscow."
The paper says the public whipping which Russia was expected to get at the OSCE summit never transpired.
"Istanbul did not become another Fulton [the venue for Winston Churchill's speech about an "Iron Curtain"], as the pessimists feared, and it does not seem as though a second round of the Cold War threatens us yet ...
"The public execution of Russia to the accompaniment of slogans about human rights did not take place.
"The complaints made at bilateral meetings between Yeltsin and Western leaders don't count. Diplomatic incantations don't spoil the general picture. Russia has not been sidelined or whipped like a naughty Milosevic."
US 'preaching' resented
In an article headlined "Russia needs dialogue and not moralisations", the Defence Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda notes that the speech made by US President Bill Clinton to the summit was "noticeably milder" than some of his recent pronouncements.
According to the paper, Mr Clinton acknowledged that "Russia is not only entitled but obliged to defend its stability" in Chechnya.
However, it takes the American president to task for "preaching" to Moscow about the inadequacies of its Chechen policy when he said that "the means which Russia has chosen undermine its aims".
Noting Washington's desire to play an active role in Chechnya and other trouble spots in the former Soviet Union, the paper says "the situation in these regions is also dominating the Istanbul summit.
"According to reports, a new term in the vocabulary of Western expansion is being bandied about there - "humanitarian intervention" - a concept which does not recognise international borders and which gives the West the right to use force wherever it wants to."
BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
Media reports
Chechnya overshadows security accords
(19 Nov 99 | Europe)
Chechen town falls without a fight
(19 Nov 99 | Europe)
Yeltsin walks out on world leaders
(18 Nov 99 | Europe)
UN envoy inspects Chechen camps
(18 Nov 99 | Europe)
Tricky task at Istanbul summit
(18 Nov 99 | Europe)
Yeltsin warns critics over Chechnya
(17 Nov 99 | Europe)
Analysis: Russia suspicious of OSCE motives
(17 Nov 99 | Europe)
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Uzbekistan voices security concerns
Russia's media war over Chechnya
Russian press split over 'haughty' West