MOSCOW, Oct 26: Russia threatened to boycott an upcoming Russia-Denmark summit in Copenhagen because a conference on Chechnya is to be held in Denmark on the same dates, the foreign ministry said.

“The holding on Danish territory of a gathering of support for Chechen terrorists calls into question the stated wish of the Danish authorities to develop friendly relations with Russia and the justification of a bilateral summit scheduled for Copenhagen,” the ministry said in a statement quoted by the Interfax news agency.

Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, called for the Chechen conference, scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, to be called off because of the hostage drama in Moscow.

“We protest categorically against the holding of this congress, particularly given the recent events in Moscow,” said the head of the Duma’s foreign affairs commission, Dimitri Rogozin, quoted by Interfax news agency.

Rogozin added that Duma speaker Gennady Seleznev had sent a letter of protest to the Danish parliament.

“Russian representatives have contacted the authorities in Denmark several times on this issue but have still had no reply,” he said.

Delegates from the worldwide Chechen diaspora, Chechnya, Russia and international human rights organisations, as well as representatives of the Duma, the Council of Europe and the United Nations, are set to attend the World Chechen Congress.

The congress, planned by the organization of the Chechen diaspora and the Danish Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, is set to focus on the war in the breakaway Russian republic and the political situation there, the social and humanitarian situation, and the problems of refugees and internally displaced persons.

President Vladimir Putin’s commissioner for human rights in Chechnya, Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, said on Saturday that the objective of the conference was “to promote the terrorists’ demands worldwide”.

“This congress is a gathering of terrorist accomplices, smeared with the blood of Russian citizens,” Interfax quoted Sultygov as saying.

Denmark’s Ritzau news agency on Friday quoted Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov as urging the Danish government to call off the meeting because it would consist of a “group of terrorists.”

One of the organizers of the event, Thomas Bindesboll-Larsen of the Danish Support Committee for Chechnya, said on Friday the congress “will be held as planned,” despite the Moscow hostage drama.

Bindesboll-Larsen rejected the claim that “terrorists” had been invited to take part, and said he hoped Russian representatives would not withdraw from the meeting because of the hostage crisis in Moscow.

Their participation “would show that this is not an anti-Russian congress,” he said.—AFP