By JABER AL-HARMI, Associated Press Writer
DOHA, Qatar - Former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, wanted in Russia for terrorist ties and linked to al-Qaida, was assassinated Friday in an explosion that ripped apart his car in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, the Qatari government said.
Yandarbiyev's teenage son was critically wounded in the blast, which occurred as he and his father were driving away from Friday prayers at a mosque, according to an Interior Ministry statement and a local hospital spokesman.
"We are collecting evidence in order to reach the perpetrators," Qatar's chief of security, Mubarak al-Nasr, said on the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera, which is based in the country.
Yandarbiyev, who was acting president of Chechnya (news - web sites) in 1996-97, had been linked to the al-Qaida terror group. Russia had been seeking his extradition from Qatar — where he lived for at least three years — accusing him of ties to kidnappers and international terrorists.
Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of holding clandestine talks with Yandarbiyev. He offered no evidence to support the allegation.
However, al-Nasr said Yandarbiyev was living "a normal life" in Qatar and was not involved in any political activities.
Al-Jazeera and fellow Arabic satellite channel Al-Arabiya reported that two people were killed in the explosion. But the Interior Ministry did not confirm this.
An Interior Ministry official said the explosion at 12:45 p.m. killed Yandarbiyev and injured his 13-year-old son, the official Qatar News Agency reported.
A doctor at Hamad General Hospital told The Associated Press that Yandarbiyev died on his way to the hospital. The doctor said his son was in critical condition. No other casualties were brought to the hospital, the doctor said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast. Such explosions are almost unheard of in Qatar, a quiet state with tight security.
Last year, the United Nations put Yandarbiyev on a list of people with alleged links to the al-Qaida terrorist group, which is blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. The U.S. government also put Yandarbiyev on a list of international terrorists who are subject to financial sanctions.
Yandarbiyev was considered a key link in the Chechen rebels' finance network, channeling funds from abroad. He had denied that the Chechen rebels had ties to al-Qaida.
"Yandarbiyev was the main ideologue of the separatists, and therefore of the terrorist organizations bringing Chechnya to such severe consequences," said the president of the Moscow-backed Chechen government, Akhmad Kadyrov.
"He is guilty of everything that has happened," Kadyrov said, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
The Russian Embassy in Doha had no immediate comment on the killing.
Boris Labusov, a spokesman for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, a successor to the KGB, said his agency had nothing to do with Yandarbiyev's death, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
A Russian member of parliament, Nikolai Kovalyov, a former director of the Federal Security Service, told Interfax that the killing was probably a vendetta.
"Knowing the (Chechen) national traditions, I would assume that it must have been the result of a blood feud, as they are never forgotten and passed from generation to generation," Kovalyov said.
Al-Jazeera reported the explosion occurred after Yandarbiyev had prayed at a mosque in the upscale residential area of al-Dafnah, a northern suburb of Doha. He had driven only 300 yards from the mosque when the blast happened.
The channel showed a badly mangled and burned SUV, with only its white fender still recognizable. A body, completely wrapped in white sheet, was loaded into a waiting ambulance.
Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after a disastrous 20-month war with rebels, leaving the republic largely lawless and running its own affairs.
Moscow's troops swept in again in 1999 after Chechnya-based militants launched raids into a neighboring region and after some 300 people were killed in apartment building explosions that Russian officials blamed on Chechen separatists.
Yandarbiyev, who was born in 1952, became vice president of Chechnya under separatist president Dzhokhar Dudayev. He served as acting president during Chechnya's de facto independence in 1996-97. In 1996, he led the rebel delegation in peace negotiations with Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.
A poet and author of children's book, Yandarbiyev became one of the most prominent proponents of radical Islam among the Chechen rebels. He came in third in Chechnya's 1997 presidential elections, behind moderate Aslan Maskhadov and the fiery rebel Shamil Basayev.
During the rule of the Islamic militant Taliban in Aghanistan in 1996-2001, Yandarbiyev opened a Chechen Embassy in the Aghan capital, Kabul, and a consulate in the southern city of Kandahar.
Chechen exiles living elswhere in the Middle East said Yandarbiyev had been living in Qatar since the summer of 2000. They said he had maintained contact with other Chechens since arriving in Qatar, but they claimed to have no knowledge of his involvement in any terrorism-related acts.
In recent years, Qatar has granted entry to a variety of Muslim politicians and militants seeking refuge, including Palestinian Hamas leaders, Algerian Muslim fundamentalists and Iraqi officials of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime.
The Qataris say that they accept such visitors because of the Arab traditions of providing hospitality to guests and of offering sanctuary to refugees.
However, the practice also serves to defuse anger at Qatar for allowing the United States to establish military bases in the small Gulf sheikdom. The U.S. command set up shop in Qatar before launching last year's war in Iraq (news - web sites) and continues to maintain a military presence there.
Fri Feb 13,11:12 AM ET
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
WASHINGTON - Former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay is advising President Bush to acknowledge he was wrong about hidden storehouses of weapons in Iraq and move ahead with overhauling the intelligence process.
In an Associated Press interview, Kay said the "serious burden of evidence" suggests Saddam Hussein did not have caches of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons at the beginning of the Iraqi war, but was seriously engaged in developing missiles.
"You are better off if you acknowledge error and say we have learned from it and move ahead," Kay said in a 90-minute session Thursday with AP editors and reporters.
"I'm afraid if you don't acknowledge error, and everybody knows why you are afraid to acknowledge error, your political opponents will seize on it, the press will seize on it, and no one will give you credit," Kay said.
Since resigning last month, Kay has said repeatedly that U.S. intelligence was wrong in claiming that Saddam had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and advanced nuclear weapons programs. Those programs were the main justification for the Iraq war.
U.N. and U.S. searches have failed to find the weapons, and Bush has appointed a bipartisan commission to conduct an investigation. Democrats in the meantime are accusing the administration of misleading the American public.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan, asked about the suggestion that Bush acknowledge error, said Kay "has said the regime was possibly more dangerous than we thought before the war. He has pointed out that, absolutely yes, he agrees that it was a gathering threat."
He pointed out that Bush has said he had expected to find weapons in Iraq.
Bush and other officials insist weapons still could be discovered. In an interview on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press" program last weekend, Bush said, "They could be hidden, they could have been transported to another country." Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has also said he believes weapons could still be uncovered.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said this week he was surprised that the inspectors did not find the weapons in Iraq. "We presented what we believed the truth to be at the time," he told the House International Relations Committee.
Kay said satellites have shown a lot of traffic going from Iraq to Syria, but that U.S. investigators could not figure out what was being transported and "Syria wouldn't help."
"My only serious regret about the continued holding on to these hopes that eventually we will find it (weapons) is it allows us to avoid the hard steps necessary to reform the process," the former U.N. and International Atomic Energy Agency inspector said.
Kay stepped down from his role as CIA adviser for the weapons search after the military diverted resources from the search to bolster security for troops and fight insurgents. He described a constant battle to keep his staff of 1,400, in which he initially prevailed but began to lose ground in the fall. He said he wasn't informed of the final changes until after the decision had been made.
Without flatly ruling out the weapons might turn up, Kay said his search was complicated by the fact that Iraqis quizzed about Saddam's weapons programs "will lie to you without embarrassment."
Despite the lack of weapons of mass destruction, Kay said, Iraq had an aggressive program to develop missiles assisted by foreign technology and scientists.
Some of the scientists eventually left the country but they still helped Saddam by transmitting information to Iraq electronically, he said.
"We have absolute evidence and proof," Kay said. But he declined to identify those who he said helped Iraq or their countries.
Kay also said "the dominance of analytical opinion" was that two trailers found in northern Iraq were meant to make hydrogen for balloons, not biological weapons. CIA Director George Tenet said last week that the issue was still under debate.
Part of the problem, Kay said, was that the trailers had never been used for anything and that their equipment was not well suited for either hydrogen or biological weapons production. Documents and testimony from Iraqis point strongly toward the hydrogen idea, he said.
Another issue was the discovery of thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes in Iraq. Before the war, Bush administration officials said those tubes were meant to be used in centrifuges to make nuclear bomb fuel out of uranium.
Although Tenet said the issue was still open, Kay said analysts have concluded Iraq had no active nuclear program.
"There's no substantial disagreement that there was no centrifuge program," Kay said.
The most likely explanation for the tubes, Kay said, is that they were to be used for artillery rockets.
Kay repeated statements that he did not believe analysts felt pressured to shape their reports to bolster the case for war, a claim made by some Democrats.
Asked whether analysts believed their findings had been distorted, Kay said: "Were some people uncomfortable about some of the rhetoric? I think the fair answer to that is `yes.'" He stressed that analysts are generally uncomfortable with any change to their wording, but understand that is the nature of politics.
"Politicians choose the best possible argument that will support the course of action they've decided on regardless of whether it's foreign policy or not," he said. "Is that cherry picking? That's the nature of the political process."