Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility on Friday for the Beslan siege in which more than 320 people died and threatened more attacks.Basayev, Russia’s most wanted man, expressed regret for the bloody outcome in Beslan, blaming it on the Kremlin. He made clear there would be no let-up in rebel attacks in the campaign for an independent Chechnya.‘‘We are not bound by any circumstances, or to anybody, and we will continue to fight as is convenient and advantageous to us, and by our rules,’’ he said in a statement.The statement, that also gave an account of his spending on attacks that have killed over 400 people in less than two weeks, appeared on rebel website www.kavkazcenter.com a day after President Vladimir Putin ruled out negotiations with separatists.Basayev confirmed Russian suspicions that his group had also masterminded suicide bomb blasts that brought down two passenger planes over Russia on August 24 killing 90 people and two other attacks in Moscow.US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, denouncing Basayev, said: ‘‘He has proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is inhuman. Anyone who would use (the killing of) innocents for political aims is not worthy of existence in the type of society that we endorse,’’ he told a news conference in Warsaw.Basayev said units of his Riyadus-Salikhin group had carried out the Beslan attack. He referred to it as the ‘‘North-West operation’’ — drawing a parallel with the Moscow theatre siege in October 2002 which he also ordered. The musical North-East was being performed at the theatre when an armed group seized it.The warlord, on Putin’s charges of links between Chechen separatists and a wider international network of terror, denied any links with Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. ‘‘I don’t know bin Laden. I don’t get money from him, but I wouldn’t turn it down,’’ he said.Outlining the costs of recent attacks, Basayev said, the plane explosions cost $4,000, two explosions in Moscow $7,000 and the bill for the Beslan attack came to 8,000 euros ($9,700). —(Reuters)
