THREE years ago today, President Putin appeared to bury Cold War rivalry for good when he sent a message of condolence to the United States after the attacks on New York and Washington.

“I want to tell the American people in Russia’s name, ‘We are with you. We fully and wholeheartedly share and feel your pain. We support you’,” he said in a televised address from the Kremlin.

Three years on, Mr Putin believes it is payback time. The Beslan school siege, which left at least 329 people dead, half of them children, was Russia’s September 11. It capped a fortnight in which terrorists blew two aircraft out of the sky, killing 90 people, and a suicide bomber at a Moscow Metro station killed another ten.

From the start of the Beslan hostage crisis, President Putin drew clear parallels with 9/11. He asked the United Nations Security Council to condemn the siege under Resolution 1373, which Washington pushed through on September 28, 2001.

He implicated al-Qaeda in the attack. He called for a shake-up of the security services. His Chief of General Staff threatened to strike terrorist targets anywhere in the world. And Sergei Lavrov, his Foreign Minister, asked Britain and the US to extradite prominent Chechen separatists. Driving the point home, Mr Lavrov even met Rudolph Giuliani, who was Mayor of New York in September 2001.

But, say analysts, the parallels end there.

Condemnation of the Beslan attack and sympathy for the victims have been unanimous, but Mr Putin’s assertion that international terrorism is to blame has been met with scepticism, especially since his claim that ten of the 32 hostage-takers were Arabs has yet to be substantiated. Officials revealed yesterday that six were Chechens and four Ingush.

Mr Lavrov insisted yesterday that some hostage-takers were Arabs. “The information that there were Arabs is confirmed, as is information that there were representatives of other nationalities, including, as I understand, Russians, a Ukrainian, Chechens, Ingush,” he told the pan-Arab television channel al-Jazeera.

In the same breath Mr Lavrov admitted, however, that identifying the charred bodies of the hostage-takers was “not that simple”.

Many in Russia and overseas have criticised the authorities for their handling of the siege, which ended in the shambolic storming of the school, and for the Kremlin’s failure to stop the Chechen war spilling over its borders.

The European Union has demanded an explanation of what happened. Britain and the US have refused to hand over the Chechens to whom they have granted policital asylum. International human rights groups accuse the Russian authorities of a cover-up.

“The world is not satisfied with the explanation Russia has given,” Lilia Shevtsova, of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, said. “The West is afraid that if Russia fails to clamp down on terrorism by addressing its domestic roots, it will become a new hotbed for terrorists.”

Stung by reactions it considers insensitive, the Kremlin has gone on the offensive, silencing domestic critics and accusing the West of double standards. Now, many analysts say, the Beslan tragedy threatens to drive a wedge between allies in the war against terrorism and push Russia ever deeper into its authoritarian past.

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