France, Germany, Sweden, Poland and Britain have come out strongly against Russia's invasion of Chechnya after the recent heavy fighting there, marking a sharp turn in international opinion on the bloodshed in the breakaway republic.


Most European capitals had formerly stopped at declaring the march of Russian tanks into Chechnya a purely internal affair. But since the weekend they have been demanding that the slaughter of innocent civilians should stop.


In addition, there are calls for Russia to justify its actions in the southern republic -- which has a largely Moslem population of 1.32 milion -- before an international forum.


"(Chechnya) is an internal Russian affair ... but in Budapest we signed a code of good conduct which commits all member states to observe a certain number of rules in internal affairs," French Foreign Minister Alain Jupp? told Reuters. Jupp? was referring to recent meeting of the 53-nation Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which plans to meet Jan. 12 to discuss Chechnya.


Jupp? asked his partners in the European Union to pressure President Boris Yeltsin into appearing before the OSCE to explain his actions in Chechnya.


Russia, however, is resisting calls to move Chechnya from the domestic stage to the global arena.


"I am against the internationalization of this conflict," said Valentin Kovalyov, deputy chairman of the State Duma said Wednesday. "It is an internal affair of the Russian state."


After U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher said he was soon to discuss Chechnya with his Russian counterpart Andrei Kozyrev, a Foreign Ministry official said the topic was off-limits.


"The situation in Chechnya is not a subject for talks," Nikolai Spassky, head of the Foreign Ministry's North America department, told Interfax.


But that has not prevented a growing chorus of condemnation from nations all the way from Sweden to Turkey.


"What is happening is unacceptable," Swedish Foreign Minister Lena Hjelm-Wallen said. "A civilized society does not solve conflicts in a way which leads to so much human suffering."


Polish President Lech Walesa called for bilateral talks, saying: "I know from my own experience that it is impossible to solve problems by use of force."


In Germany, a spokesman for Chancellor Helmut Kohl said "human rights are being violated" in Chechnya, and that Yeltsin "must find a political solution" to the conflict, according to The Associated Press. British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd also said the fighting in Chechnya must stop.


Washington issued contradictory signals, at one point apparently justifying the Russian action in Chechnya, recalling that the United States too had had to repress a secessionist movement. By Wednesday, the United States was again citing humanitarian concerns.