Representatives of Chechnya's breakaway leadership in exile have praised the armed fighters who mounted last week's bloody hostage siege in Moscow and warned there could be more such attacks.
"From a tactical point of view the operation was carried out marvellously," said Ms Alla Dudayeva, widow of Chechen separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev who was assassinated by Russian special forces in 1995.
"These young Chechen people gave their lives for peace, the same peace my late husband strove for," Ms Dudayeva, who now lives in exile in Azerbaijan, told a press conference. "What happened in Moscow was an act of desperation."
Mr Mairbek Taramov, director of the Chechen Human Rights Centre in Azerbaijan, also told a press conference: "I cannot condemn the people who did this. The Chechen nation is continuing its fight for independence. What happened in Moscow . . . is part of a national war for freedom and what Russia is doing is state terrorism.
"If the situation continues like this and if Putin does not move to start negotiations, there can be no guarantees that operations like this are not going to be repeated."
Ms Dudayeva and Mr Taramov dismissed Russian claims the hostage drama was organised by Aslan Maskhadov, the leader of the Chechen separatists.
The hostage siege was the most audacious operation by rebels from Russia's mountainous southern region of Chechnya since they began their war for independence from Moscow in the early 1990s.
Russian troops have tried, with only mixed success, to subdue the rebels and in the process they have been accused of widespread abuses of civilians' rights.
Former South African President Nelson Mandela sent condolences yesterday to his old ally Russia and relatives of over 100 Russians who died in a dramatic rescue from a Moscow theatre, condemning their captors as "terrorists". - (AFP)