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Hostages' safety 'the priority'
24/10/2002 15:32 - (SA)
Moscow - President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered his police and security chiefs to make sure that none of the hundreds of hostages in a theatre were harmed and claimed their Chechen captors were linked to
international terrorist groups.
Putin made the televised statement at the opening of a meeting
with Nikolai Patrushev, head of the federal security service, and
interior minister Boris Gryzlov to discuss measures to end the
hostage-taking that began on Wednesday night when about 40 Chechen gunmen stormed a Moscow theatre.
Putin said: "The main goal of our law enforcement agencies and special services in planning and conducting any operations should be freeing the hostages with the maximum ensurance of their safety."
He described the hostage-taking as one of the largest terror
attacks in history and claimed it had been planned by "foreign
terrorist centres" which "made a plan and found the perpetrators"
for the attack.
He said later on Thursday that the hostage-taking was
planned by the same people who had staged recent terrorist attacks in Indonesia and the Philippines, but wouldn't provide further details.
'Have spread death and destruction'
Putin said the hostage-takers "have spread death and destruction in Chechnya and elsewhere and now want to spread it further".
He later met Russia's Islamic leaders and said the
attackers intended to drive a wedge between different religious and ethnic groups in Russia, which has about 20 million Muslims.
The Kremlin has tried to rally support for its three-year war in breakaway Chechnya by saying that Chechen rebels are part of an international terrorist network and must be fought to the end.
The United States says some rebels in Chechnya are linked with
al-Qaida, but insists that Moscow negotiates a peaceful end to the
conflict. - Sapa-AP
- SAPA
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