UNITED NATIONS - Russia introduced a draft resolution Monday calling for a new list of suspects who would be subject to extradition in a stepped-up global campaign against terrorism. China welcomed it but Pakistan and other Security Council members eyed the proposal with caution.
Russia, which has denounced Western countries for granting asylum to Chechen leaders it has linked to violence, has been pushing the United Nations (news - web sites) to take tougher action against terrorists and circulated the draft last week.
The Russian draft stresses the need for the 15 council nations to "cooperate fully" in tracking down the perpetrators and organizers of terrorist attacks.
It asks the committee monitoring what governments are doing to fight terrorism to consider how to draw up a new list of "individuals, groups and entities involved in or associated with terrorist activities." It also asks the committee to consider the "expedited extradition of anyone named in the list."
Russian U.N. Ambassador Andrey Denisov said council experts would meet Wednesday to consider the draft, and he was hoping for a vote later this week or early next week.
"We understand that some countries have some problems, not with counterterrorism activity, of course, because we are united in it -- but with definitions of terrorism, first, and the specific balance between international law and national legislative systems" with regard to asylum, extradition and the list of suspects, he said.
U.S. deputy Ambassador Stuart Holliday said U.S. legal experts were studying the draft.
Pakistan's U.N. Ambassador Munir Akram said seeking to put a definition of terrorism in the draft, drawing up a list of terror suspects, and the issue of asylum are "going to be difficult."
"Our feeling would be that the Russians would do well to focus on the terrorist organization or organizations that have been attacking them and go for them in the same way that we went for al-Qaida," he said.
Bin Laden’s Envoy to Oversee Chechen Rebel Activities in Russia Created: 27.09.2004 15:42 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:42 MSK
MosNews
Abu Hafs, a close associate of Osama Bin Laden, has been put in charge of rebel activities in Chechnya, the Gazeta daily reports.
The newspaper writes that Russian special services know little of Abu Hafs. The article writes that Abu Hafs and two more foreign warlords, known for their roles in Chechen armed formations — Abu Al Walid and Khattab — got to know Bil Laden in Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan war.
In 1993 Bin Laden sent all three to Tajikistan where they fought for two years in the civil war. In 1995 the three men arrived in Chechnya. Because of their close ties with Bin Laden, Khattab and Abu Al Walid controlled the money the Chechen guerillas received from their foreign sponsors.
Khattab was killed by a poisoned letter in 2002 and Abu Al Walid died in a gunfight with Russian troops in April 2004.
The spokesman for the Federal HQ in the Northern Caucasus, Ilya Shabalkin, said late last week that Abu Al Walid’s death had been confirmed.
“During a special operation in mid-April 2004 federal forces eliminated the Arab mercenary and functionary of the international terrorist organizations Muslim Brothers and Al-Qa’idah, Abu al-Walid. Operational data, gathered by the special services, and information from other sources indicates that his place has been taken by another Arab mercenary, Abu-Hafs,” Shabalkin said.
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