Moscow

Deep divisions between advocates and opponents of the Kyoto protocol has prevented an international climate conference from reaching consensus on the pact to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, whose existence hinges entirely on Russia’s ratification.

A Russian submarine carrying 12 crew has sunk in the Barents Sea. Only one of the sailor has been saved, but rescue efforts are still under way.

The first space wedding will go ahead on Sunday after the Russian military gave permission to orbiting cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko to tie the knot with his US sweetheart on Earth, media in Moscow reported Friday.

Russia held back on Wednesday from celebrating news that US troops have killed Saddam Hussein’s two sons, with a senior official saying that the development was still no guarantee for the future security of Iraq.

Russian President Vladimir Putin remained conspicuously quiet on Sunday on a deadly suicide attack at a Moscow rock concert which served as a clear sign that his moves towards peace in breakaway Chechnya were not going according to plan.

The black sheeting looked like bin liners as paramedics yesterday tried to cover up the shredded remains of the 20 dead from the first suicide bombing to hit Moscow.

Moscow’s press lamented on Monday that Russia was slipping back to Soviet-era bad habits after the weekend closure of the country’s last major private television network TVS.

Leading Chechen rebel commander Shamil Basayev said on Monday that separatist guerrillas under his command carried out the two suicide attacks that killed 78 people in the breakaway Russian republic last week.

Russian President Vladimir Putin submitted a bill to the State Duma lower house of parliament on Thursday that would offer an amnesty to rebels in Russia’s war-torn republic of Chechnya, the Kremlin said.

At least 30 people were killed and more than 70 injured early on Monday when a truck loaded with explosives blew up an administration building in the Chechen village of Znamenskoye, a local official reported.

Foreign-backed terrorists are still operating in the separatist republic of Chechnya and receiving money and weapons from other countries, Russian Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov said on Wednesday.

It could have been a lot worse for the two Americans and one Russian whose landing ended up nearly 500 kilometres off course and their recovery hours late.

Dozens of Chechen rebels put down their arms Saturday in a ceremony apparently designed to promote harmony in the war-ruined region on the eve of a constitutional referendum, officials said.

Russian diamond mining company Alrosa is prepared to reduce diamond sales to De Beers by 25% in a nod to European Union antitrust concerns, an Alrosa executive said on Friday.

Russian officials have denied that former Chechen warlord Salman Raduyev, found dead in a jail where he was serving a life sentence, had been beaten to death. Raduyev, 35, convicted for taking more than 2 000 people hostage in 1996, died on Saturday in a high-security prison in the Perm region of the Urals after internal haemorrhaging, officials said.

THE fight against terrorism is radically changing the entire system of international relations as coalition partners rally around a common goal.

The band of heavily armed Chechen rebels holding hundreds of hostages at a Moscow theatre agreed early on Friday to free all 75 foreigners held captive, the first major breakthrough in the crisis as the siege entered its second day.

Special forces troops took control of a Moscow theatre in the early hours of Saturday morning where hundreds of hostages were being held by Chechen rebels, killing their leader and freeing all the captives.

RUSSIAN prosecutors pinned the blame on Sunday for a bomb attack that killed 42 people in Dagestan last week on pro-Chechen rebels trained at terrorist camps stretching from Georgia’s notorious Pankisi gorge to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The governor of Russia’s far eastern region of Magadan, Valentin Tsvetkov, was shot dead by unknown gunmen on Friday in central Moscow.

A human rights group sharply criticised Russia’s efforts to return displaced Chechens to their ruined homeland, saying that Chechnya is too dangerous and that dozens of civilians there are killed by Russian forces every month.

Russian emergency workers raced against time on Monday to rescue thousands of families made homeless by flash floods in war-torn Chechnya and the rest of the North Caucasus, where 53 people have so far been confirmed dead.

Russia’s former nuclear minister warned Chechen rebels that if they engage in nuclear terrorism, Moscow would retaliate with such force that the breakaway region would disappear from the map.

Russia’s Supreme Court began deliberating on an appeal
by jailed journalist, Grigory Pasko, against a spying conviction imposed for what campaigners say were legitimate whistle-blowing activities.

Nearly 650 of the released Moscow theatre hostages remain in hospital and more than 200 are in a very serious condition, Russian medical authorities said on Sunday. They said that the death toll so far was 117.

At least half a million scientists have left Russia over the past decade because of pitifully low wages, a senior science figure said on Thursday.

Six people were killed and another 21 severely injured on Monday when a powerful explosion occurred near Grozny’s central market, ripping apart a municipal bus as it drove by, local pro-Moscow officials told Interfax.

A pro-Russian Chechen official was shot dead and a Russian soldier was killed in a mine blast in the breakaway republic of Chechnya in the past 24 hours, Russian military sources said on Wednesday.