BESLAN, September 7 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The embattled Russian President Vladimir Putin continued his desperate attempts to link the war in breakaway Chechnya to what is known by the US administration as "war on terror", ruling out a public inquiry into the school hostage tragedy and likening his troops atrocities in Chechnya to "the abuse scandal" of US soldiers in Iraq.

Putin rejected a public inquiry into the Beslan school hostage crisis, as his government still faces intense world fire over the way of handling the crisis which killed almost 500.

"If that happened, it would not be very productive," Putin said in a late-night meeting Monday, September 6, with a group of foreign journalists and Russian experts.

If the Russian parliament wanted to set up its own inquiry, he would not object, but he warned that it could become "a political show", he said at the meeting, attended by correspondents for the Guardian and the Independent newspapers.

He said he would hold an internal inquiry into the Beslan tragedy, but not a public one. "I want to establish the chronicle of events and find out who is responsible and might be punished."

While admitting Russian forces had committed human rights violations in Chechnya, Putin added "But, like the torture by US soldiers in the prison of Abu Ghraib in Iraq, these were not sanctioned from the top".

"In war there are ugly processes which have their own logic," he said.

But he said there was no connection between Russian policies in Chechnya and the events in Beslan.

Russia remained interested in a political solution in Chechnya, but he ruled out talks with Chechen separatists.

"We will continue our dialogue with civil society," he said, according to The Independent.

"This will include holding parliamentary elections, trying to get as many people as possible involved, with as many views and policies as possible."

He added that more Chechens would be recruited into the republic's police force, and that Russian troops will in time be pulled back to barracks "just as the United States does in California and Texas".

The president claimed he sees the drive for Chechen independence as the spearhead of a strategy by Chechen Islamists, helped by foreign fundamentalists, to undermine the whole of southern Russia and even stir up trouble among Muslim communities in other parts of the country.

"There are Muslims along the Volga, in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. Chechnya isn't Iraq. It's not far away. It's a vital part of our territory. This is all about Russia's territorial integrity," he said.

Both the Guardian and the Independent, which published Putin's nocturnal remarks Tuesday, September 7, quoted in full his scarcastic response to those who suggested he consider negotiations with Chechens.

"Why don't you meet (Al-Qaeda leader) Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace? Why don't you do that?" he said.

The hard line approach by Putin was coupled with Russian authorities continuing a crackdown on journalists covering the siege crisis in North Ossetia, much to ire of press watchdogs.

The authorities have detained the Moscow bureau chief of the satellite TV channel Al-Arabiya on his way to Moscow from Beslan, where he was covering the hostage crisis.

Al-Arabiya was informed the journalist would be held for two days, but has not been told why he is being detained.

The arrest came amid fears of a crackdown on the media in Russia, following criticism of the government's handling of the Beslan school siege.

The editor of Russia's leading daily, Izvestia, was forced Monday to resign over the paper's coverage of the hostage crisis.

In an interview with Radio Liberty, Raf Shakirov, credited with building the former government newspaper into one of the country's most outspoken publications, said he had been forced by the newspaper's owner to resign for what he called his "emotional" coverage of the siege.

Commenting on Shakirov's dismissal, Viktor Loshak, the editor of the popular magazine Ogonyok, told the radio station: "This scares me because we are moving far away from the country that we had been trying to build for the past 10 years."

Meanwhile, Russia still faces lots of loose ends and bitter questions over the circumstances of the assault, which ended with about 500 of the hostages dead after massive explosions triggered by the unplanned raid.

French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin echoed international concerns about the handling of the siege, expressing solidarity with Russia but asking for "all the necessary information" about the crisis.

Among questions which remain unanswered was what did the hostage takers want? Did the authorities recoil from negotiating? Did security forces plan to storm the school? What is the death toll? Who are the hostage-takers?

Authorities, for example, Monday said there were 32 militants, 31 of whom had been killed and one detained. They earlier said that 10 "Arabs" were among the hostage-takers, although no evidence has been produced to back this up.

Officials later said militants included Chechens, Ingushs, one Ossetian and other Caucasians.

A former member of the elite forces said Monday that Russian special troops who launched the ill-fated assault on the Beslan hostage school were aware that a successful storming of the building was not feasible.

"All the specialists were agreed that for several reasons it was impossible to opt for an operation of force in the school," Igor Senin, president of the veterans' association for the crack Alpha anti-terrorist unit, told the Vremya Novostei newspaper.

"All the evidence showed that in the end the fighters would have demanded transport and would have tried to leave with a small number of the hostages. It's at this moment that it would have been possible to launch an assault."

Senin said that neither the positions of elite snipers nor the various stages of a possible intervention had been agreed. Meanwhile, a map of the school, which was in the hands of the crisis unit, had still not been given to the special forces.