Russia has accused the Chechen separatist president, Aslan Maskhadov, of personally organising the Moscow hostage-taking.
Russian deputy Interior Minister Mr Vasily Vasilyev blamed Mr Maskhadov for the raid, adding that his allegations were based on the hostage-takers' comments to the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television network.
"It was Maskhadov who organised this operation," Vasilyev told reporters.
On a videotape broadcast by the Arab-language television network, the hostage-takers said they were acting "under orders from the Chechen republic's military commander".
But a top aide to Mr Maskhadov said Chechen rebel leaders had not known that Chechen separatists were planning the attack and that they condemned it.
Mr Maskhadov "categorically condemns this terrorist act", his spokesman, Mr Akhmed Zakayev, said in a Radio Free Europe interview.
"The official authority of Chechnya was not aware" the attack was being prepared, Mr Zakayev added.
"I tell you officially that Chechnya's state committee of defence did not decide to carry out military action on the territory of the enemy," he said.
The rebel leadership was "prepared to help the hostages if the Russian government asks us", Mr Zakayev went on.
Maskhadov has in the past urged separatists to restrict their struggle to Chechen territory.
But in Moscow the leader of the Chechen hostage-takers, Movsar Barayev, told a western journalist he was acting on the orders of Mr Maskhadov and top field commander Gen Shamil Basayev.
"Barayev said it was a joint action of Maskhadov and Basayev, that they were under their orders," said British Sunday Times journalist Mark Franchetti, who met overnight with the Chechen commandos.
Franchetti said the guerrillas had told him "they do not intend to go anywhere, with hostages or without them, until there are changes in Chechnya".
"They have fulfilled their task. Now it is up to Putin to decide," he said.
Barayev is the nephew of slain rebel warlord Arbi Barayev, who was killed in June 2001 by Russian troops. Mr Maskhadov had long distanced himself from Arbi Barayev.
Relations between the two men became strained after Mr Maskhadov demoted Arbi Barayev from general to a simple soldier. Moscow has not recognised Mr Maskhadov as Chechnya's legitimate president since it launched a massive anti-insurgency campaign in Chechnya in October 1999 and has blurred, if not outright ignored, the distinction between the elected president and the radical extremists.
Since the beginning of the military intervention, the Kremlin has insisted that Chechen separatists are terrorists and since the September 11th, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, Moscow has claimed they have links with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
- (AFP)