Solzhenitsyn chides West

MOSCOW - Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn has accused the West of trying to ignore and sideline Russia.

The 88-year old author, who documented the murderous Soviet prison camp system based on his own seven-year experience as a prisoner of the gulag, said the Western criticism of Russia was often unfair, according to an interview with Der Spiegel magazine republished Tuesday in the Russian daily Izvestia.

"Of course, Russia is not a democratic country yet. It is only starting to build democracy and it's all too easy to take it to task with a long list of omissions, violations and mistakes," Solzhenitsyn was quoted as saying. "But did not Russia clearly and unambiguously offer its helping hand to the West after Sept. 11? Only a psychological inadequacy, or a disastrous shortsightedness can explain the West's irrational refusal of this hand."

President Vladimir Putin welcomed the U.S. deployment to the formerly Soviet Central Asia for operations in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 2001 terror attacks — an unprecedented gesture that helped boost relations but Washington.

But ties worsened again quickly amid differences over the war in Iraq, Washington's concerns about the Kremlin's backtracking on democracy and the Russia's opposition to U.S. missile defense plans in eastern Europe.

Solzhenitsyn has appeared infrequently in public in recent years, looks frail and is believed to be ailing. In rare print or broadcast interviews, he has lamented the state of Russian politics and the government, but also has praised Putin despite the president's KGB background.

Last month, Putin honored Solzhenitsyn with a State Prize for "humanitarian activity."

Solzhenitsyn scathingly criticized Putin's predecessors, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Russia's first President Boris Yeltsin for conducting ill-planned reforms and kowtowing to the West.