A relative of Madina Tamayeva, 10, killed in the school hostage siege, weeps during her funeral in Beslan, Russia, Sept. 6. (AP Photo)

MOSCOW, Sept. 8--Twelve of the Beslan school hostage-takers have been identified, a senior Russian official said Wednesday, quoted by Interfax news agency.
"We have established the identities of 12 of the bandits who took part in the attack on school number one in Beslan," Deputy State Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky said.
He said some of those identified were also known to have taken part in attacks in North Ossetia and Ingushetia in June of this year that left dozens dead, AFP reported.
The report however provided no further details on their identities.
Meanwhile in another report Russia says that it will pay 300 million rubles ($10 million) for information leading to the "neutralization" of Chechen rebel leaders Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev, Interfax
news agency said Wednesday.
The report, quoting the FSB security service, said Maskhkadov and Basayev had been wanted by Russian authorities for years in connection with various attacks on Russian territory.
The FSB will pay the reward "for reliable information on their whereabouts leading to the neutralization of these people," Interfax said, adding that anonymity and safety of informants was guaranteed. Russian authorities have accused Maskhadov and Basayev of being behind the hostage tragedy at a school in the southern city of Beslan.

John Kerry

George W. Bush

LONDON, Sept. 8--A clear majority of British voters would like to see US President George W. Bush voted out of office in November's election, according to a poll published in Britain Wednesday.
Only 29 percent of people polled by Populus for the Times newspaper wanted to see Bush return to the White House, while 52 percent preferred his Democratic challenger John Kerry, AFP reported.
Bush has seen his support among US voters surge in opinion polls after his Republican convention in New York last week.
But Britons of all ages, and from all political groups, backed Kerry over Bush.
Thirty-five percent of Conservative supporters prefer Bush, compared with 38 percent of Labour voters.
Nearly half of supporters from both parties prefer Kerry.
The poll found that 35 percent of men favored Bush and 49 percent Kerry. Sixteen percent of men were undecided.
Among women, 23 percent favored Bush and 56 percent Kerry, while 21 percent were undecided.
Populus polled 1,009 people over the weekend.
In the United States, however, voters are increasingly backing Bush, according to the polls.
Going into last week's convention he was level-pegging with Kerry, the senator and Vietnam war hero from Massachusetts.
But Bush won a convention bounce, with polls putting him seven or even 11 points ahead of Kerry.
The election will take place on November 2.

Ahmad Shah Masood

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 8--More than 20,000 Afghans gathered in Kabul on Wednesday to remember Northern Alliance military commander Ahmad Shah Masood, slain by Al-Qaeda operatives two days before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Reuters reported.
The ceremony at Kabul's National Stadium commemorated the third anniversary of Masood's assassination, and was held a day after campaigning began for Afghanistan's first ever presidential election on October 9.
Masood, known as "the Lion of the Panjsher", was the military and political leader of the Northern Alliance, a coalition of factions that helped US-led forces overthrow the fundamentalist Taliban regime which sheltered Osama bin Laden and senior members of his Al-Qaeda network.
"The martyred Masood, the national hero of Afghanistan, is one of the most glittering and luminous figures of the jihad (holy struggle) and resistance," President Hamid Karzai said in a speech at the crowded and colorful national stadium.
"He struggled with valour against invading forces for more than two decades."
The alliance has gradually lost cohesion in the past three
years since the Taliban's overthrow.
Some of its key leaders are arrayed against the US-backed Karzai for the presidential poll, which is seen as a crucial test of US nation-building efforts ahead of President George W. Bush's own bid for re-election in November.
But other alliance heavyweights, including Masood's brother Ahmad Zia Masood, have thrown their lot behind Karzai--the favorite to win the poll--and accused challenger Yunus Qanuni of exploiting Masood's legacy to boost their campaigns.
Qanuni is backed by Defense Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim, who became military commander of the Northern Alliance after Masood's death. Karzai's decision to drop Fahim from his ticket precipitated Qanuni's bid for the presidency.

PERSONALITY CULT
Masood was a leading member of the mujahideen, or holy warriors, who fought Soviet occupation in the 1980s mostly from his base in the Panjsher valley. The allies squabbled among themselves, reducing Kabul to ruins after the Russians were driven out.
Two Arabs, suspected to be members of Al-Qaeda, killed Masood on Sept. 9, 2001, while posing as journalists, detonating explosives packed into their television camera.
Many experts believe bin Laden was given protection by the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks in exchange for ridding the hardline Islamic group of the biggest threat to their leadership.
Since then a personality cult has grown up around Masood's legacy and pictures of him dominate the capital, outnumbering those of Karzai.
Qanuni supporters have pasted election portraits of their candidate next to those of Masood.
Security was tight at the stadium where an honor guard paraded on a pitch where the Taliban once carried out public executions and floggings.
A giant mural bearing a portrait of Masood was unveiled at the stadium, and workers were putting the finishing touches on a monument and fountain at a busy intersection in the capital.
Karzai's government has declared Masood a national hero, although he is remembered less fondly by many Pashtuns, Uzbeks and Hazaras than by his own Tajik ethnic group.

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Sept. 8--Deep divisions have emerged in Indonesia's powerful Golkar party over who to support in the Sept. 20 run-off presidential election after its candidate failed to make the cut, Reuters reported.
The top two candidates from the first round of presidential voting on July 5, ex-army general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and incumbent President Megawati Sukarnoputri, are facing off to be Indonesia's first directly elected head of state.
Last month, Golkar, which won the most seats in April's legislative elections, officially aligned itself with Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle in a grand "Nationhood Coalition" that will dominate the next parliament.
But many Golkar members oppose the move. Though the two parties are formally aligned in the current parliament, their rivalry runs deep, dating back to the time when Golkar was the political vehicle of autocratic President Suharto and Megawati's party was the hounded opposition.
Golkar chief Akbar Tandjung arrived in the West Sumatra city of Padang on Wednesday to a protest from the local Golkar faithful, who held banners reading "Akbar is a Pinocchio" and "The Nationhood Coalition is for Akbar not Golkar", Antara, the national news agency, said.
Yudhoyono's running mate, tycoon Jusuf Kalla, is himself a Golkar politician, a patron of Golkar's strong East Indonesia faction. But he is squabbling with Tandjung.

SEOUL,
South Korea,
Sept. 8--South Korea admitted Wednesday that it should have reported an unauthorized experiment to enrich uranium four years ago to international arms control officials, AFP reported.
The experiment conducted in January 2000 at the country's state-run nuclear research center produced a minuscule mount of enriched uranium.
Until now, the government has argued that it saw no wrongdoing despite its failure to report the experiment that produced 0.2 grams of uranium to the nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
A senior foreign ministry official indicated at a press briefing that the government was now stepping back from that position.
"This experiment itself was not subject to declarations to the IAEA but we should have declared the nuclear materials," said the official who declined to be named. "But the government failed to recognize and declare it."
IAEA staff inspected the research center in South Korea last week where the experiment took place and returned to Vienna with a 0.1-gram sample of the enriched uranium.
South Korea will send a team of officials to Vienna to attend a four-day board meeting of the IAEA starting Monday that will consider the case.
The team will argue vigorously that the "one-off" experiment was conducted for purely academic purposes and was in no way linked to nuclear weapons ambitions.
The South Koreans say the average enrichment achieved during the 2000 experiment was 10 percent, nowhere near the 90 percent needed for nuclear weapons, while the amount separated was microscopic compared to the five kilograms of enriched uranium needed for a bomb.

COLOMBO,
Sri Lanka, Sept. 8--Tamil Tiger rebels Wednesday accused government forces of launching an attack against them in eastern Sri Lanka in one of the worst outbreaks of violence during the current ceasefire, AFP said.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said heavily armed men suspected to be army commandos mounted an attack overnight against one of their posts at Pullumalai, in Batticaloa district.
"Two attackers were wounded in our counter attack," an LTTE official was quoted as saying on the pro-rebel Tamilnet website. He said commandos were assisted by some armed paramilitary cadres. The Sri Lankan military denied any hand in the attack and said it had taken place in an area under rebel control.
"We have no involvement whatsoever in this," said army chief Shantha Kottegoda. He also denied military support to a breakaway leader of the LTTE, V. Muralitharan, better known as Karuna. The renegade rebel leader went underground in April after failing to resist an onslaught in the island's east five weeks after he sparked an unprecedented split in the Tiger movement.
Kottegoda said the LTTE had maintained that their split was an internal matter for them to sort out and the military had no intention of interfering in it.
The truce took effect on February 23, 2002 and talks opened in September that year. However, the Tigers have suspended their participation in negotiations since April.
Peace broker Norway is expected to send an envoy next week to try to jumpstart the parleys.

TOKYO, Sept. 8--Former Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto remained tightlipped Wednesday over reports that prosecutors had questioned him over an undeclared 100 million yen (914,000 dollar) political donation, AFP said.
The veteran of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) did not respond when reporters asked him whether he still did not recall receiving a cheque from former officers of the Japan Dental Association.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is said to be concerned over the party's image, having promised to "destroy" old style money politics during an election campaign a few months ago.
"The issue of politics and money are always important.
I am sure it will be taken up at the next Diet (parliament) session," he told reporters Wednesday.
"This issue affects the entire political circle," he said.
Koizumi is expected to call an extraordinary Diet session later this month or early October after a planned shakeup of the party leadership and his cabinet.
Hashimoto reportedly received a 100 million yen check in July 2001 from former officers of the dentists' group at a Tokyo restaurant and gave it to the then accountant.