'Get out, or else...'

2006-06-19 16:34

Paris - An al-Qaeda-led coalition in Iraq has claimed the abduction of four Russian diplomats, giving Moscow 48 hours to pull out of Chechnya and free Chechen prisoners, in a statement posted on the internet on Monday.

"God enabled the lions of unification to capture four Russian diplomats in Iraq and kill a fifth," said the statement by the Mujahedeen Shura (consultative) Council, which groups eight insurgent factions.

It said the council's Islamic court had decided to give the Russian government 48 hours to "withdraw immediately from Chechnya" and "release all our brothers and sisters detained in Russian prisons" or "take the consequences".

The authenticity of the statement could not be independently confirmed.

The Russian diplomats were abducted on June 3 when unidentified gunmen attacked the vehicle in which they were travelling in the upscale west Baghdad neighbourhood of Mansour.

One Russian diplomat was killed in the attack and the other four abducted.

Al-Zarqawi

A Russian foreign ministry spokesperson told AFP that Moscow was "checking" the abduction claim, while a crisis cell set up by the ministry said it had no immediate information.

Russia has withheld comment on the killing of al-Qaeda's Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a US raid on June 7, a silence seen in Moscow as an attempt to safeguard the lives of the four Russian hostages.

"We know in advance that there will be appeals ... to release those (hostages) under the pretext that Russia took a clear stand in rejecting the (US-led) war on Iraq," the Mujahedeen Shura Council said.

The response is that "we fight the enemies of God in order to establish God's rule on earth ... and every Muslim ... is our brother", the statement said.

It accused the Russian government of "killing and displacing ... our people in Chechnya and Afghanistan" and of "sending its diplomats to Iraq to support the crusader enterprise led by America" and "confer legitimacy" on the US-backed Iraqi government.

The dead Russian man has been named as Vitaly Titov. The four missing are Fyodor Zaytsev, Rinat Aglyulin, Anatoly Smirnov and Oleg Fedosseyev.

The claim of responsibility came two days after Chechnya's pro-Russian leaders claimed to have "decapitated" the rebel movement by killing its self-styled "president".

The rebels named as his successor a hardline veteran fighter who rejects any compromise with Moscow.

- AFP