October 29, 2002	Tuesday	Sha’aban 22,1423

MOSCOW, Oct 28: Russian President Vladimir Putin has cancelled his visit to Denmark following Copenhagen’s decision to allow an international conference on Chechnya to be held in the Danish capital, the foreign ministry said on Monday.

“The conference is organized and financed by Chechen terrorists, accomplices and patrons from Al Qaeda who, as is now absolutely clear, were behind the awful terrorist act in Moscow,” the ministry said in a statement.

“In the circumstances, the planned visit of the Russian president to Denmark cannot go ahead,” it said.

The decision follows an announcement from Denmark, the current EU president, that an EU-Russia summit to be held on Nov 11-12 would take place in Brussels.

Putin was due to have separate talks with Danish leaders during his visit. Russia on Monday held a day of national mourning to honour the memory of the 117 hostages who died in the three-day hostage drama.

GAS POISONING: Many hostages died of gas poisoning in the hostage drama because medics had not been given proper equipment or instructions, a rescuer said on Monday, echoing mounting criticism of Russian special forces’ obsession with secrecy.

Several commentators charged that special units withheld vital information from rescuers to preserve secrecy around a mysterious gas they pumped into the theatre where the hostages were being held before they launched their assault early Saturday.

The follow-up rescue teams who entered the auditorium on the heels of the special forces were not given basic equipment which might have allowed them to save more lives, a medical aide told the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily.

“We did not even have enough stretchers. To save lives, we would have needed many qualified personnel acting according to a specially pre-established plan,” he said.

“If only we had known in advance. If at least we had been told that we would have to evacuate large numbers of people who were unconscious, that they would need respiratory and cardiac assistance. Even mouth-to-mouth respiration could have saved them,” he said.—AFP