Israel will aid Russia in fight on terror

JERUSALEM — Russia is turning for help against terrorism to a country with long experience, signing a memorandum with Israel yesterday pledging the two countries will work more closely in fighting the scourge.

The increased sophistication of the terrorists in Chechnya and growing signs of an Arab role in last week’s school attack in Beslan, Russia — where 120 victims were buried yesterday — appear to have overcome Moscow’s concerns about offending its Arab allies by cooperating with Israel.

Funeral processions jammed the rain-filled streets of Beslan on the first of two days of official mourning yesterday, while other anguished parents searched for missing children. At least half of the more than 330 dead in explosions and a shootout Friday at the school are children.

Reports from Moscow suggested the attackers — many of them Arabs — were able to hide explosives and weapons in the school during the summer while posing as construction workers.

An Israeli spokesman said yesterday’s memorandum with Russia aimed to “encourage in every possible way the development of broad bilateral, regional and multilateral cooperation in fighting international terrorism.”

Israeli radio said cooperation is expected to move quickly into operational areas, with exchanges of intelligence information, mutual visits by anti-terror teams and the joint development of models for dealing with different kinds of terror threats.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in a telephone conversation Sunday on continued cooperation on matters relating to security, intelligence and humanitarian issues.

“We must concentrate our political and intelligence efforts to destroy terror,” Mr. Sharon was reported to have said.

Russian authorities were reeling at the realization that the attack in Beslan had been planned for months and that the terrorists had been able to smuggle explosives into the school virtually under the noses of police, who had a station 200 yards away.

The terrorists acted after having determined that the school was due for renovations to its gymnasium floor, the Itar-Tass news agency quoted a law-enforcement official as saying.

“The bandits were able to bring into the school a large quantity of weapons, ammunition, equipment and explosives, under the guise of planks, cement and other building material, enough to defend the seized place for a long period,” the official said.

Other reports have suggested al Qaeda-linked terrorists may have taken charge of the Chechen insurgency, sidelining indigenous leaders such as fugitive Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov. As many as 10 of those involved in last week’s attack were Arabs, Russian officials said.

In Jerusalem, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who signed the cooperation memorandum with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom during a long-scheduled visit yesterday, welcomed Mr. Sharon’s offer of help while striving to hold the door open to Russia’s Arab allies.

“We appreciate the very strong readiness of the Israeli people to help Russia at this hour, and this will certainly strengthen the counterterrorist coalition these days,” Mr. Lavrov said.

But, he said, “I believe the key to the solution of the problem is to bring all countries to fight terror, and I can assure you that in addition to our very close counterterrorist cooperation with Israel we have similar counterterrorist cooperation with Arab countries.”

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