“We need a fresh look on Chechen politics and on the use of negotiation. Cleansing operations alone will not solve the situation,” said Alexander Brod, head of the Moscow office for Human Rights.

Sergei Arutyunov, a top Caucasus specialist at Russia’s Academy of Science, also blamed Putin for his staunch refusal to sit down for talks with Maskhadov, including during the siege of a school in Beslan in North Ossetia earlier this month.

“Negotiations with Maskhadov would have undermined the position of Basayev,” he told reporters in Moscow.

The Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev has claimed responsibility for the bloody siege in Beslan, in which at least 339 people were killed, half of them children.

Arutyunov added that many children could have been saved if Maskhadov had been asked to negotiate with the hostage-takers, who were demanding Chechnya’s independence.

The former Chechen president, whose influence in the separatist movement has been diminished by more radical elements, had offered to help mediate an end to the hostage siege.

“The Beslan tragedy was used to reinforce authoritarian tendencies,” claimed Brod, who was speaking on behalf of the Helsinki Group, a human rights organization.

Brod also accused the Russian authorities of portraying Chechens and other Caucasian nations as “enemies, destructive forces,” thus exacerbating xenophobic feelings.

In the wake of the Beslan tragedy, several restaurants serving Caucasian cuisine were attacked and their owners severely beaten up in Yekaterinburg, in the Urals, in a series of racist attacks that left one person dead and two injured.

Several people from the Caucasus region were attacked in the Moscow metro over the weekend.

Meanwhile the process of paying compensation to the victims of Beslan began this week, with Putin asking Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov to oversee the disbursement of 100,000 roubles ($3,460 dollars) to close relatives of those killed in the siege.

Seriously wounded survivors will receive 50,000 roubles each, those with light injuries will get 25,000 roubles, and those with no injuries, 15,000.

More than 700 people were injured in the siege.

VILNIUS – Lithuania’s state security department said on Monday that it had closed down an internet site used by a leading Chechen warlord to claim responsibility for the Beslan school siege. The decision was taken at a meeting of Lithuania’s state defense council, whose members are the president, parliamentary speaker, defense minister, and army chief.

Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas said after the meeting that the site instigated religious and national hatred, which is forbidden under Lithuanian law.

Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for the deadly school hostage-taking in a letter posted on kavkazcenter.com, which is operated from a private apartment in the capital, Vilnius. Founded in 1990, kavkazcenter. com has regularly been used by Basayev and other hardline Chechens. It has also occasionally published statements by former Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov.