Russia to strike against 'terror' worldwide

Russia's top general threatened yesterday to attack 'terrorist bases' anywhere in the world, as security services put a $10 million bounty on two Chechen rebels they blame for last week's school siege.

In Vladikavkaz, capital of North Ossetia where the school is located, an angry crowd of around 2,500 protested against the president, forcing him to promise to sack his administration.

"As for launching pre-emptive strikes on terrorist bases, we will carry out all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world," said General Yuri Baluevsky, chief of Russia's general staff.

The FSB security service announced the $10 million reward for information leading to the 'neutralisation' of Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev, two Chechen separatist leaders who are household names in Russia after a decade of conflict in the mainly Muslim southern province.

But liberal parliamentary deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov said this twin approach only illustrated Russia's inconsistency.

"These are really strange statements because one of them indicates that we have not the slightest idea where the rebels are, while the second one indicates that we are still ready to use force anywhere," he told a conference.

In 2002, President Vladimir Putin accused neighbouring Georgia of harbouring Chechen rebel bases and said this gave Moscow the right to strike at suspects beyond Russia's borders.

In June, a Qatar court sentenced two Russians to life imprisonment for killing a Chechen rebel leader, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, in the Gulf state. The judge said they had been acting on orders from Moscow.

"It is a threat toward Europe," Maskhadov's London-based spokesman Akhmed Zakayev, told Reuters. "I do not exclude that what they did in Qatar they could try to do in any European country."

The protestors in Vladikavkaz accused North Ossetian President Alexander Dzasokhov of incompetence for allowing the siege in Beslan to end in catastrophe, his government failing to get ambulances or fire engines to the scene.

"I promise that in the next two days there will be an order dismissing all the government," the Kremlin-backed Dzasokhov told the rally.

Over 1,200 people were taken hostage in Beslan, near Chechnya, at least 326 were killed - half of them children - and 727 wounded, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov said. Only 210 bodies have been identified.

The broadcast on Russian television of graphic footage filmed by militants inside the school added to the horror as Beslan residents prepared to bury more dead.