Beleaguered Estonian embassy in Moscow suspends consular services

May 2, 2007, 7:39 GMT

Tallinn/Moscow - The Estonian embassy in Moscow on Wednesday suspended consular services after a deadline expired for Russian demonstrators besieging the building to be removed.

'The situation at the embassy this morning is the same as it has been for the last six days, so from 9 this morning (0600 GMT) the embassy has stopped its consular services,' Estonian Foreign Office spokeswoman Mariann Sudakov told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

'When the Russian authorities manage to normalize the situation, we will start giving consular services again,' she added.

The siege of the embassy began on Friday evening, a day after the Estonian authorities in Tallinn ordered the relocation of a Red Army monument from central Tallinn to a nearby war cemetery.

Estonians see the monument as a symbol of their country's illegal occupation by the Soviet Union, but most ethnic Russians see it as a tribute to Russians' sacrifice in the victory over Nazism.

The removal of the monument sparked the worst riots Tallinn has seen since the Russian Revolution. In two nights of violence, one Russian citizen was killed, 156 people were injured, 148 buildings were vandalized and over 1,000 people were detained, police said.

In Moscow, members of pro-Kremlin youth groups formed pickets around the Estonian embassy, blocking access for embassy workers and intermittently pelting the building with stones and tomatoes.

They set up tents, portable toilets, field kitchens and loudspeakers, and kept up a barrage of threatening slogans and patriotic music, the embassy's spokesman, Franek Persidski, said. They were watched, but not hindered, by Russian police, he added.

On Monday the Estonian authorities issued a protest note against what they saw as Russia's refusal to protect the building.

The same day, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet asked his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier - who currently represents the EU presidency - to engage Russia in an attempt to ease the situation around the building.

On Tuesday a Russian delegation visiting Estonia told their hosts that the blockade was 'depressing,' but was not interfering with the embassy's work, Russian embassy spokesman Maxim Koslov said.

But that afternoon a group of demonstrators broke into the embassy grounds and cut down and slashed its flag.

The same evening Paet issued an ultimatum: if the situation was not 'normalized' by 9am on Wednesday, the embassy would end consular work at its Moscow offices for all except Estonian citizens.

That threat has now been carried out. Estonia's consulates in St Petersburg and the border town of Pskov are working as usual, however, Persidski said.