ReliefWeb

Warsaw (dpa) - Hundreds of Poles and Chechens protested in three Polish cities Sunday demanding an end to the ongoing Russian military action in Chechnya, media reports said.

Some 80 protestors waving green, white and red Chechen flags picketed the Russian Federation Embassy in the Polish capital Warsaw. The protestors, many of them Chechen refugees, unfurled a huge banner reading "Enough genocide in Chechnya''.

Nearly 200 Chechen refugees also protested in Lomza, eastern Poland, while dozens of others demonstrated in the western city of Poznan, the Polish PAP news agency reported.

The Sunday demonstrations were designed to commemorate the 59th anniversary of the February 1944 Soviet-forced deportation of some 460,000 Chechens from their Caucasus homeland to Kazakhstan, protest organizers said.

dpa sib emc AP-NY-02-23-03 1212EST

Copyright (c) 2003 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
Received by NewsEdge Insight: 02/23/2003 12:12:33