Russians Claim Key Kill In Chechnya

Russia said Thursday its troops killed one of the country's most wanted men, Khattab, an Arab-born Chechen guerrilla leader who Moscow claims has close ties to Osama bin Laden.

The United States has said Omar Ibn al Khattab, a Jordanian, may have terrorist connections.

"International terrorist Khattab, an ideologist and organizer of terrorist activity, has been eliminated as a result of a special operation by the Federal Security Service in the Chechen republic," an FSB spokesman told Reuters.

There were no independent confirmations of the claim, which a rebel spokesman denied. The security service has released claims about Chechnya in the past that have later turned out to be untrue.

Sergei Yatstrzhembsky, a top Kremlin spokesman, reinforced Zdanovich's claim in remarks to NTV television.

"There is rather weighty evidence that this odious person, one of the organizers of terrorists bands in Chechnya, has been liquidated. We hope this evidence will be provided to the public in the near future," Yastrzhembsky said.

Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev called Zdanovich's statement "absolute disinformation." Reached by telephone, he said that Khattab was in fine health and "at his post."

Akhmad Kadyrov, the Moscow-appointed Chechen leader, said he was skeptical about the security service's claim. He said he would believe it only if he saw Khattab's corpse, according to Interfax. Many Chechen commanders who had been reported dead later "popped up where nobody expected them," Kadyrov said.

Khattab's death, if true, would be a major coup for Moscow and its campaign to stamp out an armed insurgency on its turbulent southern rim.

Russian officials have called Khattab one of their worst foes in breakaway Chechnya since accusing him of launching an invasion of a neighboring Russian republic in 1999. That invasion and apartment-house bombings around Russia prompted the military to send troops back into Chechnya that year.

U.S. officials have said Khattab and Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev are believed to have financial and other ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network.

In an interview posted in November on the Chechen web site Kavkaz.org, Khattab said he shared bin Laden's broad agenda of expelling non-Muslims from Muslim lands.

A veteran of the fight against the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, Khattab has been active in Chechnya since the first, 1994-96, conflict. He was reportedly the organizer of a brutal 1996 ambush on a Russian convoy in which 53 servicemen were killed.

In a February 2001 interview conducted in a cave in southeastern Chechnya, Khattab told The Associated Press that Chechnya was "just a tiny territory," but suggested the conflict there was part of a larger, religious war.

"I'm a soldier of Islam and...I will fight the infidels no matter where I am," he said.