Russia has denounced as "blasphemous" a request by the European Union's Dutch presidency for an explanation for the bloody end to a mass hostage seizure at a school by Chechen gunmen.
Bot gonna get bopped?
But Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot, who made the request in a statement on Friday on behalf of the EU presidency, said on Saturday he had been misunderstood and he would try to calm the row by talking to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. "There obviously was a misunderstanding," Bot told a news conference after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in the Netherlands. "My words have been misinterpreted. I never said that I needed to be ... informed."
The only misunderstanding that's happening is your own misunderstanding of concepts like decency...
More than 320 people, almost half of them children, were found dead after troops stormed a school on Friday in the southern Russian town of Beslan, where Chechen separatists had held more than 1,000 hostages for 53 hours. In a statement issued in the name of the EU presidency on Friday, Bot said all countries should work together to stop such tragedies, adding: "We also would like to know from the Russian authorities how this tragedy could have happened." The Russian Foreign Ministry reacted with outrage to Bot's statement, and Interfax news agency said the Dutch ambassador had been summoned to the ministry to explain.
You got some 'splainin to do, Lucy!
"Mr Bot's elaborations are an absolute contrast with the wide international support and solidarity with Russia in these tragic days," a ministry statement said. "Inappropriate statements by the Dutch minister look odious ... and blasphemous. We expect explanations from the Dutch side."
| I'd call that an appropriate reaction. Certainly it was the reaction here. |
Bot said had only sought more information from Moscow and had not intended to criticise. "I will certainly set the record straight with my colleague Lavrov later in the day," he said.
...then I will endeavor to keep my job.
At Valkenburg in the Netherlands, where the EU ministers were meeting, Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds told reporters she understood the Russian reaction and Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen said it would be "a very premature and wrong judgment" to fault the Russian security forces.
Besides, they have all those tanks and we've already pissed off our American friends! |