RUSSIA - Sept 8 - $10m Bounty On Chechen Warlords.

Moscow offers a Rbs300m ($10.3m, 8.4m, [pounds sterling]5.7m) bounty for two Chechen warlords and warns it may launch pre-emptive strikes on suspected terrorist bases abroad after the Beslan school siege. The FSB, the federal security service opened telephone hotlines in Moscow and Chechnya, offering a reward for anyone providing information that led to the "neutralisation" of Shamil Basaev or the former Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov, who it claims organised Sep 1-3 siege. The warnings come as thousands demonstrated in North Ossetia, scene of the siege last week in which more than 335 people died. They called for the resignation of the republic's president Alexander Dzasokhov, whom they accused of failing to make sufficient efforts to prevent the deaths. Dzasokhov said he would fire his government but made no mention of his own future. FM Sergei Lavrov, used Soviet-style accusations of "double standards" on Sep 7 when he expressed "regret" that in spite of "irrefutable facts", the US and the UK had granted asylum respectively to Ilyas Akhmadov and Akhmed Zakaev, two Chechens in Maskhadov's former government. He pledged to seek their extradition. In 2000, Mr Putin warned of pre-emptive strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Defence Minister in 2002, Sergei Ivanov, hinted at attacks against Georgia, which Russia accused of harbouring Chechen fighters. No such action has since taken place. But in June two Russians were imprisoned in Qatar, which found them guilty of assassinating Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, another Chechen rebel leader, on Moscow's orders. Zakaev, who has denied involvement in the Beslan siege, said on Sep 8 he feared that Russia might now try to assassinate Chechens in Europe. Fyodor Lukanov, editor of the magazine Russian Foreign Affairs, said: "This Soviet-style rhetoric is just rhetoric, but this is really a very critical point in Russia's relations with the west. The authorities believe that if Europe especially does not understand that it is impossible to talk to people who attack children, there is a total misunderstanding".