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Laden and Mullah Omar calling shots in Kashmir, Chechnya: Putin

Rejecting the European demands for a political dialogue with the Chechen rebels, Russia President Vladimir Putin has said that Osama bin Laden, Taliban leader Mullah Omar and other like-minded people are calling the shots in Kashmir, West Asia, Chechnya and other parts of the world.

"These guys kill hundreds and thousands of innocent people not just for their pleasure, but they make political demands also," he said. "They are putting their demands before the United States, before the European and Arab states, demands concerning the Middle East and also Kashmir, and in our case it is Chechnya."

Putin said this in a statement on Sunday at a Kremlin meeting with pro-Moscow Chechen political, business and religious leaders.

"To those who thoughtlessly or deliberately, out of fear of the bandits or following the lingering European tradition of appeasement, will continue to urge us to sit down at the negotiating table with the killers, I suggest that they should enter in to talks with Bin Laden or Mullah Omar," Putin said.

He cautioned that any body at home or abroad urging for talks with the self-styled Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov would be seen by the Kremlin as "an accomplice of terrorists".

Putin's statement comes ahead of his Brussels visit for Russia-EU summit, where Maskhadov is projected as the only legitimate negotiations partner for Moscow in Chechnya peace talks.

PTI

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