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INTERVIEW-Expect Chechen attacks to continue -
Berezovsky
By Peter Graff
LONDON, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Chechen militants will "continue what they started" in last month's deadly Moscow theatre siege if Russia does not make peace with moderates, exiled businessman and politician Boris Berezovsky said late on Tuesday.
In a wide-ranging telephone interview in London, where he is living in self-imposed exile, Berezovsky said he had no fear Britain would extradite him. Moscow announced earlier on Tuesday it had asked Britain to send him home to face fraud charges.
"As I understand, there are a lot of political reasons for the Russians to request me, and there are politicians here who may want to be polite to Russia. But the court is independent," Berezovsky said in English.
"According to my knowledge of England and the history of England and English court, I don't have any trouble with my future," he said.
He linked Moscow's pursuit of him with its hunt for fugitive Chechen rebel leaders with whom he once implemented a peace deal as a top security official under former President Boris Yeltsin.
"The new Russian leadership, Putin and his surroundings, they don't want peace. They want to continue to fight, and they want to repress and to destroy all people who created the peace.
"I mean myself, Maskhadov, Zakayev," Berezovsky said of elected rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov and his top envoy Akhmed Zakayev, who was arrested in Denmark last week at Moscow's request and is also fighting extradition to Russia.
He said Russia would "absolutely" face more attacks like the Moscow theatre siege, in which Chechen gunmen and self-styled suicide bombers held more than 800 hostages. At least 120 hostages were killed, nearly all by a knock-out gas Russian special forces used to subdue their captors.
"I know, according to my experience of Chechens, I am sure that they will continue what they started in the Moscow theatre," Berezovsky said.
"And I would like to stress, it is not the choice of the present generation, Maskhadov and Zakayev, it is the choice of the future generation, like people who are 20-25 today."
"There is no way but the peace way, and no one to talk with but Maskhadov," Berezovsky said.
ONCE AN INSIDER
Once the ultimate Kremlin insider under Yeltsin, Berezovsky helped catapult Yeltsin's hand-picked successor Vladimir Putin into the presidency, using his control of Russia's main national television network and other media.
But Berezovsky later fell out with Putin and left the country. Russian prosecutors have since probed his affairs and courts have stripped him of his once-mighty media empire.
He has lately become a fierce critic of Putin and an advocate for talks in Chechnya, where he oversaw implementation of a peace deal as deputy head of Yeltsin's Security Council in 1996. Putin repudiated that deal and sent troops back in to Chechnya in 1999.
"I think that we need to speak even to terrorists, particularly in cases like we have now in Russia, in Chechnya, because it is not obvious that people who fight for independence of Chechnya, all of them are automatically terrorists," Berezovsky said.
He compared Putin to Ariel Sharon, another leader who has taken a tough line toward militants but has so far failed to guarantee security.
"I absolutely don't accept the position of Israel that (there should be) absolutely no negotiation with terrorists.
"Israel did not solve any problems at all because now bloodshed is all over their country. And this is a small country...How do you protect a country the size of Russia?"
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