THE US and RUSSIA: The US ambassador to Moscow criticised the Kremlin yesterday for withholding the name of the gas used to end the three-day theatre siege.
US embassy officials have expressed increasing frustration at not knowing what kind of gas the hostages, who included four American residents, were exposed to. They said this made effective treatment difficult.
The ambassador, Mr Alexander Vershbow, who is normally positive towards the Kremlin, said: "We regret that the lack of information contributed to the confusion after the immediate operation to free the hostages was over.
"It's clear that with perhaps a little more information at least a few more of the hostages may have survived." He added: "To the best of our knowledge, we do think it was an opiate."
Russian officials have refused to identify the gas used to incapacitate the gunmen , saying that terrorists could exploit such information to find antidotes against its future use. They said the gas was not military in origin, but from the stock of weapons belonging to the federal security bureau (FSB).
But US officials were quoted widely yesterday as having identified the gas as fentanyl, an opiate-based chemical, which can be delivered as an aerosol.
The US embassy did not confirm the report, but said doctors from a western embassy had examined the bodies of asphyxiated hostages and concluded that they died from opiate overdoses.
Four hostages killed by the gas were buried privately in Moscow yesterday, and some bodies were flown back to their home towns. So far 118 hostages have died during or since the Russian raid, as well as all 50 gunmen; 317 of the 655 people taken to hospital are still there, 27 in a life-threatening condition, officials said.
As President Vladimir Putin announced the incident would not alter his policy of reducing the Russian troop presence in Chechnya, the interior ministry said there had been dozens of arrests in connection with the incident.
Yesterday, Russian security officials acted to expose links between the Chechen gunmen who stormed the theatre and al-Qaeda financiers. FSB officials linked the theatre gunmen with "international terrorists" to discredit the Chechen separatist movement they claimed to represent. A senior FSB source said the theatre gunmen had been filming their exploits because they wanted to send the video to wealthy Arab sponsors.
"They send such tapes as these to the Middle East," the source said, adding that they normally went to Mr Movladi Udugov, the former information minister of the Chechen government, who is considered an aide to the separatist leader Mr Aslan Maskhadov.
The tapes would be edited and given to wealthy sheikhs in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as proof of the results of their sponsorship.
"\ gets money and redistributes it," the FSB source said. The bureau has persistently tried to discredit Mr Maskhadov and his associates. Mr Udugov could not be reached for comment.
Meanwhile, senior ministers said yesterday Russia would press ahead with a referendum in Chechnya on a new constitution giving the republic wide powers of self-government. It will soon get its own locally recruited police force and a police ministry, so that Russian army and interior ministry troops there can be reduced to a minimum. The announcement is clearly meant as a response to the calls inside and outside Russia for new efforts to find a political solution to the three-year war.
The hostage-taking in Moscow last week refocused attention on the conflict, which Russia has repeatedly claimed is winding down, even though its soldiers continue to die at a rate of two or three a day.
Four were killed yesterday when an interior ministry helicopter was shot down as it was landing at the heavily guarded Russian military headquarters at Khankala.
The German chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schröder, who is much respected in Russia for his independent stand on Iraq, said yesterday: "We underline our solidarity with the Russian people in the brutal terrorist attacks such as the recent one in Moscow.
"At the same time we are pressing for a political solution of the conflicts in Chechnya and the Caucasus region."