17 September 2004	Friday	01 Shaban 1425

ASTANA, Sept 16: Russia's President Vladimir Putin on Thursday rejected the idea of negotiations with Chechen separatists blamed for the Beslan school siege at a regional summit focused on anti- terrorism.

Mr Putin said that holding talks with rebel leaders from Russia's breakaway republic of Chechnya would be akin to negotiating with Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. "(Osama) bin Laden has twice offered Europe negotiations and no one thinks of negotiating with him. "These are people you cannot talk to," Mr Putin said.

"Naturally the atrocities we encountered in Beslan gave us the complete moral right to insist that these people who are fighting against Russia are part of the terrorist internationale," he told journalists.

Mr Putin has repeatedly linked recent attacks in Russia that culminated in the deaths of more than 330 people at a school in the town of Beslan, near Chechnya, to international terrorism.

His critics have focused more on local causes including corruption and the failure to seek a political solution to the more than five-year guerrilla war in Chechnya. The Russian leader was speaking at a meeting of heads of the 12-member Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) bloc of former Soviet republics, in fact attended by only 10 of the countries leaders.

But despite much talk of fighting terrorism, a news conference by the 10 exposed an array of tensions, including between Putin and the pro-Western Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

Saakashvili lashed out at Putin for Moscow's ties with two breakaway Georgian republics, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. "Russia can and should play a positive role in resolving all post-Soviet conflicts including (in Georgia). All contacts should be at a state level," he said.

Georgia, which accuses Russia of encouraging separatism in its former satellite state as a means of weakening Tbilisi, says this contradicts Moscow's tough stance against Chechen pro-independence rebels.

"These questions cannot be solved by double standards," he said. Georgia's anger at Moscow's ties with Georgia's breakaway regions mounted last month after Putin held talks with the self-declared prime minister of Abkhazia ahead of controversial elections there.

The spat worsened when Russia restored railway traffic between Moscow and Abkhazia after a 12-year pause. Putin, however, rounded on Georgia for its attempts to rein in the renegade regions since Saakashvili came to power early this year vowing to reunite his fractured country.

"An economic blockade, not to mention military pressure, do not result in resolving problems," he said. The meeting in a vast, gilded palace newly built by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in the capital Astana ended with the transfer to Russia of the leadership of the CIS after an 18-month period in which Ukraine administered the group. -AFP