MOSCOW EXPECTS BRITAIN TO BAN PRO-CHECHEN ORGANIZATIONS OPERATING IN ITS TERRITORY








LONDON, March 12 /from RIA Novosti's Sergei Kudasov/ - Russia expects Great Britain to list organizations providing assistance to Chechen militants among those banned for complicity in terrorist acts. It was what the Russian president's aide for Chechnya Sergei Yastrzhembsky said, Monday, at a London conference of the Tripartite Commission, a non-governmental organization grouping prominent political figures and entrepreneurs from all across the world.


	Late this past February, the British Foreign Office made public an enlarged list of terrorist organizations which are subject to new tough anti-terrorist laws. Among those on the list are organizations known to render assistance to terrorists operating in Chechnya.


	Russia has provided Britain with video footage showing acts of terrorism in Chechnya, noted Yastrzhembsky. Moscow, he recalled, has more than once pointed to a number of organizations raising funds for Chechen separatists, criminals, terrorists as well as information centres that openly support the above.


	Yastrzhembsky then recalled media reports testifying to the operation of such organizations in the U.K., particularly Hizb al-Takhir al-Islam. Also operating in the United Kingdom are the extremists Omar Bakri Mohammed, Abu Hamza al-Masri and Abu Kutada. There are reports telling about cases of recruiting Britain-based youngsters into Chechen rebel units in British mosques or even at the London School of Economics and Political Science.


	Russia expects London to lend an attentive ear to its arguments and to ban the organizations rendering help to Chechen terrorists, Yastrzhembsky emphasized.


	The fact that Britain has adopted new anti-terror legislation, according to which many of the organizations that have something to do with terrorism are going to be closed down, is of paramount importance to Russia, said Yastrzhembsky.