Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Chechen separatist leader denies involvement in plane crashes.



Anti-terror action in Russia after planes crash
Related links
'Terrorism not ruled out'



Wednesday August 25, 2004 11:45 - (SA)

MOSCOW- Security has been stepped up across Moscow after two Russian planes with a total of 90 people aboard crashed almost simultaneously while flying from the capital to the south of the country.

"All of the security services have been instructed to step up their vigilance," Interfax news agency quoted a Moscow government spokesman as saying.

"We are enforcing all possible anti-terror measures," Kirill Mazulin was quoted in the report as saying, adding that forces from the Federal Security Service, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, were included in the stepped up security.

The planes went down hours after a bomb blast in Moscow injured four people, raising fears of terror attacks only days ahead of controversial elections in the war-torn republic of Chechnya.

An AFP photographer at the site where wreckage from one of the jet planes was discovered spoke to local witnesses who reported hearing at least one explosion as the aircraft passed over the central Russian city of Tula.

Both planes departed from Domodedovo airport, one of five commercial airports that serve the Russian capital and surrounding region.

The crashes occurred four days ahead of elections in Chechnya where the candidate supported by the Kremlin appeared likely to win.

But some rebel factions have contested the legitimacy of the vote and have vowed to stage strikes in Russia in protest.

In a message posted on a rebel Internet site on August 2, Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov warned that if Russian forces did not leave Chechnya "then we will carry the war over to its territory."

A spokesman for Maskhkadov however told Echo Moscow radio station, however, that neither the rebel leader nor any of the forces loyal to him had any involvement in the plane crashes.

AFP

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http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/zones/sundaytimes/newsst/newsst1093427103.asp