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Russia Names Deadly
Opiate Siege Gas

By Sebastian Alison and Per Bech Thomsen
10-30-2

MOSCOW/COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Bowing to international pressure, Russia Wednesday finally named the gas which ended a theater siege by Chechen rebels but the political fallout from the hostage crisis was far from over.
 
Russia's health minister said the gas which killed more than 100 hostages in the Moscow theater but allowed Russian special forces to rescue some 700 others was based on Fentanyl, a potent opium-based narcotic.
 
In Denmark, police arrested a senior Chechen rebel at the behest of Russia, which said it suspected him of helping plot the siege in which at least 119 hostages died.
 
The Danish justice minister said Akmed Zakayev, a top aide to Chechnya's fugitive separatist president Aslan Maskhadov, may be extradited if Russia promised not to use the death penalty.
 
Zakayev, attending a long-planned Chechen exiles' gathering this week in Copenhagen, and Maskhadov had condemned the Moscow raid as the work of an extremist faction outside their control.
 
But police said they had received information that Zakayev was suspected of helping prepare the siege and of taking part in other "terrorist" acts from 1996-99.
 
Denmark's agreement to allow the Chechen meeting to go ahead enraged Russian President Vladimir Putin, who canceled a state visit next month in protest.
 
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen denied giving in to political pressure from Moscow: "This case has been treated according to normal police procedures," he told reporters. "I would find it very alarming if a government or an opposition interfered in the work of the police."
 
Russian officials were elated by the detention of Zakayev, the most prominent spokesman for Maskhadov, who was elected in 1997 after forcing out Russian troops but went into hiding in 1999 when Putin sent the army back into the chaotic region.
 
WEST URGES CAUTION
 
Russian police say dozens of suspects had been rounded up since the siege's end Saturday in an "unprecedented drive to track down terrorists."
 
European leaders have shown concern over the possibility of a heavy-handed response in Chechnya, the mostly-Muslim province on Russia's southern fringe where rebels have been fighting for independence on and off since 1994.
 
"Even under difficult conditions, democracy must be bound to its own basic rules and the principles of the rule of law," German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said Tuesday.
 
"I can only appeal to those responsible in the Russian government to finally bring about a political solution. Anyone who understands the history of the Caucasus, who understands the history of Chechnya, knows that violence is no solution."
 
While the tactics of Russian special forces to end the Moscow siege were seen at home as a proportionate response, the U.S. ambassador to Russia and others said lives could have been saved if the Kremlin had been less secretive about the gas used.
 
Not even doctors treating the sick were told what the gas was. The mystery had fueled intense speculation that Russia had used the BZ nerve agent developed during the Cold War.
 
But Health Minister Yuri Shevchenko put an end to speculation Wednesday, insisting the gas used was not a banned substance.
 
"To neutralize the terrorists a substance based on Fentanyl derivatives was used," he said in comments broadcast on Russian television, adding that on its own the substance was not lethal.
 
Shevchenko said it had proved fatal in this case, especially to vulnerable people such as those with heart conditions, because of the dreadful conditions in which they had been held for 58 hours.
 
Fentanyl works quickly on the brain's pain receptors and is used both for general anesthesia and light sedation.
 
"I officially declare: chemical substances which might have fallen under the jurisdiction of the international convention on banning chemical weapons were not used during the special operation," Shevchenko added.
 
MORE EVIDENCE
 
Denmark said it needed more evidence to extradite Zakayev, but might do so if Moscow pledged not to use the death penalty, still on its statute book but unused since a 1996 moratorium.
 
"There is a possibility that we will extradite him if a number of demands are fulfilled and we get a guarantee that he will not be subject to the death penalty," Justice Minister Lene Espersen told a news conference.
 
Russian Justice Minister Yuri Chaika said he did not see any obstacles to Zakayev's extradition, saying: "Russia and Denmark are members of the Council of Europe and in 1997 a convention on extradition was passed. According to this convention, citizen Zakayev should be handed over to Russian courts for crimes committed on the Russian territory."
 
Zakayev, a deputy prime minister in Maskhadov's fugitive administration, lives in exile and says talks -- which Moscow has largely ruled out -- are the only way to end the war.
 
He warned in a Reuters interview Sunday that Russia's nuclear facilities could be the target of future attacks by extremists unless the Kremlin began meaningful talks rather than seeking to shore up its own pro-Moscow government in Chechnya.
 
Extradition looks set to pose a dilemma for the European Union, whose six-month presidency Denmark holds.
 
Russia sees its long conflict with Chechen separatists as part of the U.S.-led "war on terrorism."
 
Outside criticism of what human rights groups call Russia's brutal crackdown on the million-strong population there has been more muted since September 11. But European ministers have made clear pressure for a political settlement will not go away.





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