[TexKat]

A general view of hundreds of thousands of protesters taking part in a demonstration organized by pro-Damascus movements led by the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group in downtown Beirut.(AFP/Anwar Amro)

Hassan Nasrallah (C), the secertary general of the Lebanese Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah, is flanked by his bodyguards as he addresses the crowd during a demonstration organized by pro-Damascus groups in downtown Beirut.(AFP/Ramzi Haidar)

Lebanese protesters take part in a demonstration organized by pro-Damascus movements led by Lebanon's Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group in central Beirut.(AFP/Patrick Baz)

A banner against the United States, France and UN Security Council resolution 1559 which calls for Syria to remove its troops from Lebanon is seen during a pro-Damascus demonstration led by the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah in Beirut.(AFP/Ramzi Haidar)

Syrian soldiers ride on the back a truck, packed with personal belongings, in the Dahr al-Baydar area in the mountains east of Beirut as Syrian troops dismantled military posts in Lebanon ahead of a pullback.(AFP/Ramzi Haidar)

Lebanese police officer sits on a top roof watches the crowd of pro-Syrian protesters gather near the U.N building during a pro-Syrian demonstration in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday March 8, 2005. The protest, organized by the Shiite Muslim militant Hezbollah, is meant to counter the almost daily anti-Syrian protests staged by the Lebanese opposition that had drawn tens of thousands. Around half a million pro-Syrian protesters gathered in a central Beirut square Tuesday, chanting anti-American slogans and wildly waving Lebanon's flag in answer to a nationwide call by the militant Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group to demonstrate against foreign intervention and counter weeks of massive anti-Syrian rallies.(AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

[TexKat]

Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov has been killed by Russian troops fighting to quell a long rebellion in the mainly Muslim Caucasus region, the Russian army announced March 8, 2005. Maskhadovon salutes on the day of his presidential inauguration in Grozny, in this file photo from February 12, 1997 (Grigory Dukor/Reuters)

Chechen Leader Maskhadov Killed, Boost for Putin

By Richard Balmforth

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov was killed Tuesday by Russian security forces, authorities said, giving a boost to President Vladimir Putin's hard-line campaign to crush the separatist rebellion in Chechnya.

The 53-year-old Maskhadov, who had battled Russian troops in his North Caucasus homeland for more than a decade, was killed in a village just north of the regional capital Grozny, security chiefs said.

Russian television showed the gray-haired Maskhadov lying, bare-chested, on his back in a pool of blood, with his arms spread out on either side. There was what appeared to be a bullet mark in his left cheek.

Chechen rebels acknowledged his death was a great blow but would not halt the separatist cause. Maskhadov's envoy Akhmed Zakayev told Reuters in London the rebels would name a successor within days, but he gave no hint as to who this would be.

"A special operation was carried out by us in the village of Tolstoy-Yurt as a result of which the international terrorist and leader of the rebel group Aslan Maskhadov was killed," FSB Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev told Putin.

Tolstoy-Yurt is 20 km (12 miles) north of Grozny.

The armed campaign led by Maskhadov brought bombings to the very heart of Russia. But many commentators viewed him as a moderate leader and a possible negotiator with the Kremlin though this view was rejected by Moscow.

The phlegmatic Putin, shown on television with Patrushev, appeared to take news of Maskhadov's death calmly, telling his security chief to double-check the identity of the body.

But the demise of Maskhadov, who had a $10 million bounty on his head after being linked by Russian forces to a string of deadly rebel attacks, was welcome news for the Kremlin chief who has suffered many setbacks in pursuing a tough line in Chechnya.

Ten months ago the Kremlin-backed president of the rebel region, Akhmad Kadyrov, was assassinated in a bomb attack and a low-level war continues to take Russian and Chechen lives daily.

Putin said once Maskhadov's death was confirmed FSB troops involved in the operation should receive a state award.

Authorities blamed Maskhadov for operations including an attack on a Moscow theater, a bombing near the Kremlin and a massacre last year at a school in the south Russian town of Beslan. At least 326 hostages -- half of them children -- died at the school in Beslan.

He himself however denied links to many of the high-profile Chechen operations, blaming Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev.

Maskhadov was elected president of Chechnya during a three-year period in the late 1990s when the region enjoyed de facto independence.

HUNT FOR BASAYEV

With the death of Maskhadov, Russian forces will be eager now to capture or kill Basayev, who claimed responsibility for Beslan and is regarded as Russia's Public Enemy No. 1.

Army spokesman Ilya Shabalkin told Russian news agencies that Maskhadov had been hiding in a reinforced cellar when he was killed.

Moscow has also linked Maskhadov and Basayev to groups that conducted attacks such as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Maskhadov repeatedly called for talks with Moscow on Chechen demands for independence, but the Kremlin refused to negotiate.

Last month he ordered a three-week cease-fire by his men in what he said was a gesture to show his desire for peace. Observers said the fact the truce held showed he was in command of his forces.

Russian leaders, fearing a breakaway by Chechnya could trigger secession moves by other regions in the sprawling federation, have fought two wars in Chechnya.

Tens of thousands were killed on both sides in the first conflict from 1994-96, when Maskhadov was commander-in-chief of rebel forces. Putin sent troops back into the territory in late 1999 to cement his image as a strong leader ahead of his election as president in 2000.

[Gucho]

Law lets terrorism suspects buy guns

Tuesday, March 8, 2005:

Being on federal watch list doesn't disqualify buyers.

By ERIC LICHTBLAU - THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON -- Dozens of terrorist suspects on federal watch lists were allowed to buy firearms legally in the United States last year, according to a congressional investigation that points up major vulnerabilities in federal gun laws.

People suspected of being members of terrorist groups are not automatically barred from legally buying a gun, and the new investigation, conducted by congressional officials at the Government Accountability Office, indicated that people with clear links to terrorist groups had taken advantage of this gap on a regular basis.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, law enforcement officials and gun control groups have voiced increasing concern about the prospect of having a terrorist walk into a gun shop, legally buying an assault rifle or other type of weapon and using it in an attack.

The GAO study offers the first full-scale examination of the possible dangers posed by gaps in the law, congressional officials said, and it concludes that the FBI could do a better job of matching gun background checks against lists of suspected terrorists.

At least 44 times between February and June of 2004, people regarded by the FBI as known or suspected members of terrorist groups sought permission to buy or carry guns, the GAO found.

In all but nine cases, the FBI or state authorities who handled the requests allowed the gun applications to proceed because a check of the would-be buyer found no automatic disqualification, such as being a felon, an illegal immigrant or a person deemed "mentally defective," the report found.

In the four months after the formal study ended, authorities received an additional 14 gun applications from terror suspects, and all but two of those were cleared to proceed, the investigation found. In all, officials approved 47 of 58 gun applications from terror suspects over a nine-month period last year, the GAO found.

The gun buyers came up as positive matches on a classified internal FBI watch list that includes thousands of high-risk terrorist suspects, many of them being monitored, trailed or sought for questioning as part of continuing terrorism investigations, officials said.

GAO investigators were not given access to the identities or histories of the gun buyers because of the sensitivity of those terrorism investigations.

The report is to be released today, and an advance copy was provided to The New York Times.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who requested the GAO study, plans to introduce legislation to address the problem in part by requiring federal officials to keep records of gun purchases by terror suspects for a minimum of 10 years.

Such records must now be destroyed within 24 hours as a result of a change ordered by Congress last year, but Lautenberg maintains that the new policy has hindered terrorism investigations by eliminating the paper trail on gun purchases.

"Destroying these records in 24 hours is senseless and will only help terrorists cover their tracks," Lautenberg said. "It's an absurd policy."

Lautenberg blamed the problem on what he called the Bush administration's "twisted allegiances" to the National Rifle Association.

The NRA and gun rights supporters in Congress have fought -- successfully, for the most part -- to limit the use of the FBI's national gun-purchasing database in West Virginia as a tool for law enforcement investigators, saying the database would amount to an illegal registry of gun owners nationwide.

The legal debate over how gun records are used became particularly contentious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, when it was disclosed that the Justice Department and Attorney General John Ashcroft, a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, had blocked the FBI from using the gun-purchasing records to match against about 1,200 suspects who were detained as part of the investigation.

Ashcroft maintained that using the gun records in a criminal investigation would have violated the congressional law that created the system for instant background gun checks, but Justice Department lawyers who reviewed the issue said they saw no such prohibition.

In response to the GAO report, Lautenberg also plans to ask Alberto Gonzales, Ashcroft's successor, to assess whether people on the FBI's terror watch list should be automatically banned from buying guns. Such a policy would require a change in federal law, since being a member of a terrorist group is not a banned category.