Indeed, the American-backed effort to clear the gorge of terrorists appears to have become a de facto campaign against the Chechen nationalist movement as well, thereby entangling the United States in the region's politics to a greater extent than before.
Threatened by the unlovely Chechen independence movement, Yeltsin reacted in a paroxysm of rage.
A former colonel in the Soviet army, he added his weight to the Chechen independence movement in the early 1990s.
The authorities have withheld remains in several prominent cases, including of leaders in the Chechen separatist movement.
The Kremlin contends that Mr. Zakayev, a former guerrilla and longtime political figure in the Chechen separatist movement, was also involved in last week's hostage crisis.
After Mr. Zakayev left Russia and became an exiled leader of the Chechen independence movement, Mr. Khadzhimuratov was confronted by Russian security forces on Jan . 2 , 2001he said, and shot in front of his wife and young children.
But in the mid-1990s, Mr. Williamsaidid, the Chechen separatist movement split between those who focused locally on the struggle for independence and others who saw their fight as part of a global jihad.
Russia demanded today that Qatar arrest and extradite an Islamic extremist linked to the Chechen separatist movement, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, charging that a taped telephone conversation proved his involvement in last week's seizure of some 800 hostages by Chechen guerrillas.
After a firefight and what hostages later called brutal treatment, Mr. Raduyev threatened to execute his captives one by one unless Russia ended its efforts to crush the Chechen independence movement.
In 1999, amid a crescendo of violence throughout the north Caucasus, Mr. Putin, then the prime minister, oversaw a second war that obliterated the Chechen rebel movement The message from Moscow — empowered and newly rich with petrodollars — was clear.
