Russia seeks UN terrorist asylum abuse crackdown

Russia yesterday proposed a UN crackdown on the abuse of political asylum for terrorist purposes, raising pressure on Western states to hand over wanted Chechen activists.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was to announce the initiative, which follows Russia's deadly Beslan school siege, in his UN General Assembly address, a Russian spokesman said.

"We can't let terrorists exploit a protection designed for oppression victims, not for persecutors," said British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, pledging London would work closely with Moscow to ensure greater global cooperation on terrorism.

The draft Security Council resolution seeks to speed the extradition of people accused of abusing their status as political refugees to organise or finance terrorist acts.

It also suggested compiling a consolidated UN blacklist of individuals, groups and entities involved in terrorism, who would be subject to an assets freeze, an arms embargo and "expedited extradition"

Britain has granted political asylum to Akhmed Zakayev, a spokesman for Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, and spurned a Russian extradition request citing insufficient evidence. It has also given asylum to fugitive tycoon Boris Berezovsky.

Russia has intensified calls to hand over Zakayev after a spate of attacks by Chechen rebels across Russia, including the downing of two civil aircraft and the school siege in which more than 320 hostages died - half of them children.

Mr Straw stressed that Britain and its European Union partners would not hand over people who could face the death penalty, torture or unwarranted imprisonment. Capital punishment is banned in EU states.

Moscow has circulated a draft to the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council, the US, France, Britain and China.

The text, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, also urges the UN to consider creating an international fund to compensate terror victims.

But the call for an expanded terrorism blacklist could falter because of long-standing deep divisions among UN members over how to define terrorism.

A Security Council committee currently compiles only a list of people and groups linked to the al Qaeda network and the Taliban, with an eye to freezing their assets and travel and prohibiting them from acquiring arms and related material.

The list is regularly updated, based on information from the 191 UN member nations, and distributed around the world.

Western governments say Moscow should seek a political solution in Chechnya but President Vladimir Putin has vowed to crush the rebels and equated calls to talk peace with them to negotiating with Islamic militant Osama bin Laden.

The Russian draft defines terrorism as the deliberate targeting of civilians to "provoke a state of terror, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organisation to do or to abstain from doing any act."