Russia's public enemy number one, Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, claimed responsibility for the deadly Moscow hostage-taking and absolved deposed elected Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov of involvement in the operation. In a statement issued on the Chechen Kavzak Center website, Basayev asked "forgiveness from him (Maskhadov) and my fellow fighters for that fact that I hid the planning and carrying out of this operation from them."

His comments came after the Kremlin accused Maskhadov, who was elected president of Chechnya in 1997 shortly after the republic gained de facto independence from Russia following a 1994-1996 war, of helping plan last week's Moscow theater attack.

The most feared surviving warlord of the north Caucasus republic, Basayev, 37, announced his resignation Friday from the elected Chechen government of Maskhadov, after claiming responsibility for an attack "on the very lair of the Russian enemy."

The attack was claimed by a group of Basayev fighters called Riyadus Salikhin.

The bearded Basayev became Russia's public enemy number-one in 1995 when he took several hundred people hostage in a hospital at Budyennovsk, in southern Russia.

On Friday, Putin's government asked the United States to add that group to its terrorism blacklist, a top Russian official said.

The United States "can draw entirely concrete conclusions from this statement," said Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Russia's upper house of parliament.

On Thursday, the United States said it was considering Russian requests to place several unnamed Chechen groups on its blacklist, but said the review had come in response to Russian requests made prior to last week's hostage crisis in Moscow.

Basayev has sought to restore a 19th-century Islamic state in the north Caucasus and continued fighting despite losing a leg after stepping on a landmine in February 2000.

Russian authorities hold him responsible for a series of bomb attacks that killed 293 people between August and September 1999, blasts that provoked the second Chechen war.

Russian authorities put a one-million-dollar bounty on Basayev's head shortly after the start of the second Chechen war

DENMARK REJECTS RUSSIAN EXTRADITION REQUEST FOR CHECHEN ENVOY

Denmark meanwhile rejected an extradition request from Russia for detained Chechen envoy Akhmed Zakayev as Moscow has failed to provide proof of its accusation that he is a terrorist, Danish Justice Minister Lene Espersen said.

She warned that Zakayev would be released if Russia failed to provide the necessary documents to back its extradition request by November 30.

Zakayev was detained Wednesday by Danish police acting on a Russian arrest warrant claiming he was involved in last week's hostage siege by armed Chechen separatists who held more than 800 people captive in a Moscow theatre.

Russia has been pressing Denmark to hand over Zakayev, the main envoy of deposed Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov.

In remarks on Danish television, Espersen called the extradition request "unacceptable" as it is "incomplete."

"There is not even an official translation of the documents," she said.

PHOTO CAPTION

Chechen nationalist warlord Shamil Basayev speaks in Grozny, Chechnya, the capital of the Caucasian republic, on Oct. 28, 1999. Basayev claimed responsibility for the hostage-taking attack on a Moscow theater in a Web site statement Friday, Nov. 1, 2002, and promised that future attacks would be even more destructive.(AP Photo/Ruslan Musayev)
- Nov 01 2:04 PM ET