Explosives Found in St. Petersburg Cinema

A week after the hostage crisis at a school in the southern Russian town of Beslan claimed more than 300 lives, authorities discovered a cache of explosives on Thursday at a theater undergoing renovations in St. Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city.

As news of the discovery sent ripples through a tense Russian society, authorities announced that they had identified 10 of the terrorists involved in the Beslan hostage-taking, and Russia's foreign minister criticized western governments for offering asylum to Chechen separatist leaders.

Another disaster averted

Police found explosives, detonators and a gun in a St. Petersburg cinema that was closed for renovation. According to Interfax news agency, police from the organized crime squad arrested three men from Kazakhstan and confiscated their Kalashnikov rifles.

Included in the cache were 900 grams (two pounds) of plastic explosives, 200 grams of dynamite and two home-made devices.

In the school in Beslan, where more than 1,000 adults and children were taken hostage, authorities have said terrorists hid explosives under the gymnasium floor during the summer school holidays, which they later used. They, however, did not confirm whether the explosives found in St. Petersburg were hidden by terrorists with a similar purpose in mind.

Hostage takers identified

Also on Thursday, authorities announced that they had identified 10 of the terrorists killed in a gun battle with Russian special forces in the Beslan hostage taking. Six were identified as Chechen rebels and another four as coming from Ingushetia, a republic neighboring Chechnya.

The identification confirms reports that the hostage-taking was related to the ongoing conflict in Chechnya, where separatists have been battling for independence from Russia for more than five years. The Beslan hostage taking was the latest in a string of attacks attributed to separatists, including the downing of two airliners and a suicide bombing outside a Moscow subway station.

The additional presence of Ingush people in the attack prompted fears that long-standing tensions between the Ingush and ethnic Ossetians, who are the majority in the republic of North Ossetia, where the town of Beslan is located, could flare-up.

Russian foreign minister critical

Angered by Britain's decision to grant asylum to Akhmed Zakayev, an envoy for Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, and the United States' decision to do the same for Ilyas Akhmadov, who was foreign minister during Chechnya's de facto independence in the 1990s, Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov blasted western governments.

"Granting asylum to people involved in terrorism -- and Russia has documented evidence of this -- not only causes us regret but also effectively undermines the unity of the anti-terror coalition," he said.

On the same day Lavrov had strong words for western leaders, Russian politicians were trying to downplay Chief of Staff General Yuri Baluyevsky's Wednesday outburst, in which he suggested that the Russian government was considering taking pre-emptive action against Chechen rebels. Several, including Lavrov, said Russia would continue to respect international laws in its struggle with the Chechens, and Baluyevsky's comments did not signify a change in approach.