Conflicting comments from Russia and the West over Iran’s role in the possible meeting have added to disagreements which already threaten to derail the conference proposed by Moscow and Washington last week.

“Among some of our Western colleagues, there is a desire to narrow the circle of external participants and begin the process from a very small group of countries in a framework which, in essence, would predetermine the negotiating teams, agenda, and maybe even the outcome of talks,” Lavrov said in an interview posted on the Foreign Ministry website on Thursday.

Iran, which supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has welcomed the proposal and expressed hopes that it would be a part of the process.

Its desire to participate in a June 2012 meeting on Syria hosted by the United Nations in Geneva was a bone of contention between Washington and Moscow.

“One must not exclude a country like Iran from this process because of geopolitical preferences. It is a very important external player. But there is no agreement on this yet,” Lavrov said in the interview given to a Lebanese television station.

The West is loath to see Iran, which has grown increasingly isolated on the international stage because of Western fears it is developing nuclear weapons, being at any such talks.

The meeting, which U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said would likely take place in early June, will aim to have the same global powers that attended the 2012 meeting, but this time include representatives of the Syrian government and opposition.

Last year the foreign ministers of the U.N. Security Council’s five permanent members – Russia, the United States, China, France and Britain – all attended the Geneva talks along with Turkey, Kuwait, Qatar, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Arab League head Nabil Elaraby and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

PROSPECTS FAR FROM CLEAR

With Syria’s factional and sectarian rivalries more entrenched than ever, however, it is far from clear the warring parties are ready to negotiate with each other.

Most opposition figures have ruled out talks unless Assad and his inner circle are excluded from any future transitional government.

Lavrov also said Saudi Arabia, a foe of both Damascus and Tehran and leading backer of the rebel forces which did not participate in last year’s meeting, should be present.

He added that he would not exclude any political opposition groups, but that “terrorist groups” like the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front had no place at the negotiating table.

He did not mention any of the other rebel groups that operate under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army.

In Paris, French President Francois Hollande told a news conference that despite an urgency to solve the crisis politically, Russia’s arms sales to Syria proved that Assad’s opponents needed to maintain military pressure.

France and Britain are trying to convince European partners to amend an arms embargo that would allow delivery to Syrian rebels. Russia has been one of Assad’s biggest arms suppliers.

“While the Russians are accepting the idea of this conference they continue to give weapons to Bashar al-Assad’s regime, so we need to have an attitude that balances that out,” Hollande said.

A French official reiterated Paris’ previously-stated stance that Iran could not be part of any talks.

“Iran cannot be part of it because it always tries to mix the Syria debate with the nuclear issue,” the official said.

No venue has been confirmed but Kerry has talked of a “Geneva Two” meeting.

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris, Writing By Thomas Grove; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

A 23-year-old man in Russia’s southern city of Volgograd was tortured and killed after revealing he was gay during a drinking session last Thursday night, investigators said, taking a rare step by linking a murder to homophobia.

The victim’s 22-year-old friend and a former convict aged 27 were detained for the attack, which gay rights activists say is a brutal example of rising violence against homosexuals in the year since President Vladimir Putin latched on to family values to shore up support in Russia’s largely conservative society.

Along with a planned new law banning the spread of gay “propaganda” among minors, Putin has also overseen a religious revival that aims to give the Orthodox Church, whose leader has suggested that homosexuality is one of the main threats to Russia, a more public role as a moral authority.

Gay rights campaigner Nikolai Alexeyev said the draft law, which could be passed this month, and Putin’s criticism of gays for failing to help Russia’s population decline, amounted to “a call to action for the scum who committed this crime”.

“It essentially gives these people carte blanche to commit such crimes,” he said of the law, a local version of which is already in place in Russia’s second city of St Petersburg.

The number of documented cases of violence against gays in Russia is low. Rights group Sova, which tracks extremist violence, says violence against gays has risen sharply – but from only three recorded attacks in 2011 to 12 in 2012.

But there are no official figures on anti-gay crime in Russia, and gay rights campaigners say the numbers available mask the true number of attacks on gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people. Most go unreported, or are not classified as such by the police.

“Such crimes are committed around Russia every day,” Alexeyev said. “As a rule, all these crimes are categorized as something ordinary – they argued over a bottle of vodka, or there was ‘personal animosity’. The real motive of hate is not mentioned.”

Lawyer Maria Kozlovskaya, who works with the LGBT community, points to an internet poll late last year that found 15 percent of about 900 LGBT people surveyed in Russia said they had been physically attacked at least once in the previous 10 months.

THE MUZHIK RULES

Gay activists say the government’s conservative policies offer “unspoken support” for violence. This, they say, could even have made the suspects in the Volgograd murder describe their victim as gay to win some sympathy.

“I think they may want to say, ‘Look, we killed a gay person and not a regular, normal person’,” Alexeyev said.

Andrei Gapchenko, a senior investigator in Volgograd, said one of the suspects had admitted torturing the victim.

“Four young people were drinking … And one of them already knew, he’d heard from others, that he (the victim) was of an untraditional sexual orientation,” he said by telephone.

“He asked him the question and the victim said yes .. After that, one of them hit him, he fell to the floor, and then they brutally beat him, set fire to the clothes he was wearing, slashed his anal area and then stuck three bottles in there, again beat him and then threw a 20-kg stone onto his head.”

He said violent crime was not unusual in Volgograd, but that homophobic crime was.

Many Russian men like to be seen as a “muzhik” – which literally means “peasant” but now connotes a tough, single-minded man with conservative ideals who dominates his household.

Such men have been part of Putin’s power base since he was first elected president in 2000. He has sought to rally their support since returning to the presidency a year ago, especially after protests against his return to the post after four years as premier, mainly by middle-class liberals in big cities.

As support for same-sex marriage and other forms of equality increases in the West, Russian gays say they face shrinking freedoms and rising violence.

“Since Putin’s return to power it’s got worse,” said Igor Yasin, one of about 20 protesters who were attacked outside the Russian parliament in January when they tried to demonstrate against the planned bill on gay propaganda.

“Things were always difficult, but they only started getting dangerous about a year ago,” said Yasin, a 32-year-old employee at a state-owned television station.

Yasin’s face was bloodied after being punched by one of the black-clad men who called themselves Russian Orthodox activists. They pelted protesters with rotten eggs and ketchup, knocked men and women to the ground and called them demons and witches.

“They said they were doing God’s will, and then they broke my nose,” said Yasin.

Violence against activists has become so bad, he says, and police protection so meager, that four months ago he and nearly 20 other activists started their own martial arts classes at a gym in southern Moscow where they meet three times a week.

PRODUCING CHILDREN

Putin says Russia does not discriminate against gays, but opponents say he has fostered prejudice with public remarks that seem to set them apart as second-class citizens.

When Putin was greeted by hundreds of rainbow flag-waving protesters on a trip to the Netherlands in April, he said the law would be no threat to the LGBT community, but suggested it could help reverse a decline in Russia’s population, which fell to 141.9 million in 2011 from 148.6 million in 2001.

“It is imperative to protect the rights of sexual minorities, but let’s agree that same-sex marriage does not produce children,” Putin said.

Last month he said Moscow might seek changes in an agreement regulating adoptions of Russian children by French parents, as a French law allowing same-sex marriage went against “the ethical, legislative and moral norms of Russia”.

Lawmakers say those morals are reflected in the proposed law against gay “propaganda”, which could ban the promotion of gay events, including gay rights marches, and impose fines of up 500,000 roubles ($16,600) on organizers.

“The spread of gay propaganda among minors violates their rights,” said Elena Mizulina, a pro-Putin deputy who chairs the lower house’s family issues committee. “Russian society is more conservative, so the passing of this law is justified.”

Russian psychologist Igor Kon wrote that in medieval times, Russian attitudes towards gays were more tolerant than those in western Europe, but that changed during the Soviet era, when Josef Stalin made sodomy punishable by up to five years in jail.

Homosexuals were then often persecuted and intimidated, and sometimes denied membership of, or expelled from, the ruling Communist Party when membership was key to promotion at work.

Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1993, two years after the Soviet Union broke up, but the stigma remains strong, and activists say the community is often blamed for chronic problems.

“The ultra-right radicals decide immigrants are responsible for unemployment, and then they decide that LGBT is guilty for the fall in the birthrate, that morals are in decline, that AIDS is spreading. All those problems can be dumped on the gays; it’s convenient,” said Yasin.

A survey by independent pollster Levada last year found that nearly 50 percent of Russians believe homosexuals should be given medical or psychological treatment, and 5 percent said they should be “destroyed”.

Such attitudes mean life is fraught with danger for gays in Russia, opera singer Slava Kagan-Paley said.

“It’s very hard … I know a lot of young guys who cannot tell the truth to their parents,” he said, speaking on a gay-friendly night at a central Moscow club.

“It ends up that they get thrown out of their house, and they end up on the street and end up actually being a prostitute because they have no money to live on.”

GAY SCENE

LGBT Russians fear the propaganda law will bring a broader crackdown.

Gay rights campaigners say the bill that won preliminary parliamentary approval in January contains no details on what is considered propaganda, and fear the possible proximity of children could be used to apply it to any gay rights rally or even displays of affection.

Holding hands or kissing a same-sex partner in public, they say, might be enough to be hit with a $170 fine.

“The fact is that any demonstration of their sexual orientation is considered to be propaganda,” said Yevgeny Arkhipovy of the Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights.

Some of the local laws against exposing minors to gay “propaganda” are packaged with bans on promoting pedophilia.

“While an adult can choose how to live and whom to involve in your intimate life, it is forbidden to impose on children preferences of a non-traditional nature that contradict (our) traditions,” Sergei Zheleznyak, a United Russia lawmaker and vice-speaker of the State Duma, said last month.

In an interview with Interfax news agency on the January 6 Russian Orthodox Christmas eve, Patriarch Kirill, the church’s leader, equated homosexuality with drug addiction, prostitution and adultery as the biggest threats facing Russia.

“Society has always suffered blights, but in our time, as in the decline of the Roman Empire and other civilizations, they were considered as socially acceptable. And as a result the institution of the traditional family breaks down,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Sonia Elks and Ludmila Danilova, editing by Elizabeth Piper and Will Waterman)

A day after talks in Moscow at which he and Russian officials agreed to try to bring Syria’s warring parties together to discuss ending a civil war, Kerry discussed with human rights campaigners what they say is a clampdown on dissent by President Vladimir Putin.

“I just met with a group of your civil society folks who are struggling to find their voice in their own country, who courageously stand up and fight for what we take for granted, in many cases, in America,” he said.

It was not the response hoped for by some of the activists, who say Putin has used Soviet-style repression to tighten his grip on power since returning to the presidency a year ago.

“We spoke to him. He listened, he’s hopeful. What else can you say?” said 85-year old Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who has challenged the authorities over human rights since the start of the Soviet dissident movement in the 1960s.

“I remember the times of (Soviet dictator Josef) Stalin very well. I should say our current leaders are returning to those times by putting pressure on any sign of civil activity … We don’t know when the pressure will end,” said Alexeyeva, who now heads the Moscow Helsinki Group.

LAWS AIMED AT STIFLING DISSENT

Critics say new laws, including a broadening of the definition of treason and increased fines for unsanctioned protests, is aimed at stifling dissent and ending a protest movement that rose in 2011 against Putin’s 13-year-rule.

Washington has regularly criticized the Kremlin in recent months over its record on human rights and democracy, and wants a new law that forces non-governmental organizations funded from abroad to register as “foreign agents” to be rescinded.

But Kerry concentrated more on securing progress towards a political solution in Syria during his two-day visit before heading for Rome.

Another human rights campaigner, Lev Ponomaryov, said the lack of public criticism during his trip reflected the fact that Russia and the United States are trying to cooperate on issues including Syria after a period of strains in relations.

“Russia is now an ally of the United States and what is more important to the two of them are large geopolitical problems,” he said.

Washington and Moscow have often disagreed over how to handle the more than two-year-old conflict in Syria and their agreement to try to bring the warring sides together for talks was considered a diplomatic victory by both.

Ponomaryov said he was, however, encouraged by passage of legislation widely known as the Magnitsky Act, which bars Russians accused of human rights violations from entering the United States or holding assets there.

It is named after a whistle-blowing lawyer who died in detention in 2009 while awaiting trial on charges of tax evasion – the same accusation he had made against state officials.

Putin has said Magnitsky died of a heart attack, but his own human rights council has said he was probably beaten to death.

The U.S. State Department’s latest human rights report for 2012 noted a number of problems including “a series of measures limiting political pluralism” in Russia.

The report also said there was a denial of due process in detention and trials of protesters arrested at a protest that turned violent on the eve of Putin’s inauguration last year.

The Kremlin has denied carrying out a crackdown on opponents and says it does not use the courts for political ends.

(Reporting by Thomas Grove; Editing by Michael Roddy)

Visiting Moscow after Israel bombed targets near Damascus and as President Barack Obama faces new calls to arm the rebels, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Russia had agreed to try to arrange a conference as early as this month involving both President Bashar al-Assad’s government and his opponents.

East-West disagreement that has seen some of the frostiest exchanges between Washington and Moscow since the Cold War has deadlocked U.N. efforts to settle the Syrian conflict for two years, so any rapprochement could bring an international common front closer than it has been for many months.

But with Syria’s factional and sectarian hatreds more entrenched than ever after 70,000 deaths, it is far from clear the warring parties are ready to negotiate. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government, which has offered reforms but dismisses those fighting it as “terrorists”.

The late hour of the announcement in Moscow – Kerry was kept waiting for three hours by President Vladimir Putin – also meant leaders of the Western-backed opposition umbrella group the Syrian National Coalition were not available for comment. Many on the body have insisted Assad’s exit is a condition for talks.

Inside the country, where rebel groups are numerous and have disparate views, a military commander in the north, Abdeljabbar al-Oqaidi, told Reuters he would want to know details of the U.S.-Russian plan before taking a view: “But,” he added, “if the regime were present, I do not believe we would want to attend.”

Alarmed at the prospect of the conflict spilling across an already volatile and economically important region, however, the major powers have, as Kerry told Putin late on Tuesday, “very significant common interests” in pushing for a settlement.

“The alternative,” Kerry later told a joint news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, “is that Syria heads closer to an abyss, if not over the abyss and into chaos.

“The alternative is that the humanitarian crisis will grow. The alternative is that there may be even a break-up of Syria.”

GENEVA AGREEMENT

A year ago, at a conference in Geneva in June, Washington and Moscow agreed on the need for a transitional government in Syria but left open the question of what would happen to Assad, whose departure Obama has called for but which Russia, accusing the West of meddling, says should be a matter for Syrians only.

Rejecting a characterisation of Moscow as the protector of Assad, to whose army it has been a major arms suppliers since the days of his father’s rule, Lavrov insisted Russia was not concerned by the fate “certain” individuals.

“The task now is to convince the government and all the opposition groups … to sit at the negotiating table,” he said.

Kerry said the conference should be held “as soon as is practical – possibly and hopefully by the end of the month”. Neither he nor Lavrov said where it might take place.

Kerry said there would be “a growing crescendo of nations who will want to push for a peaceful resolution, rather than the chaos that comes with the breakup of a country”.

Although the United States has said Assad should not be part of a transitional government in Syria, Kerry said the decision on who takes part in it should be left to the Syrians.

Lavrov said the aim would be “to persuade the government and the opposition together … to fully implement the Geneva communiqué” on creating a transitional government.

Russia, backed by China which shares its mistrust of Western enthusiasm for toppling autocrats, has refused appeals to consider sanctions on Assad, vetoing three U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning his crackdown on opposition groups.

ASSAD DEFIANT

Recent developments have helped focus minds on the risks of wider war in the Middle East: intelligence reports that Assad’s troops may have used chemical weapons had renewed calls for Obama to arm the rebels or even offer U.S. forces; Islamist fighters pledging allegiance to al Qaeda has highlighted how some of the rebels are also hostile to the West; and Israeli air strikes in the past few days, said to target Iranian arms headed for Lebanon’s Hezbollah, have underlined the risk of escalation.

Speaking before the announcement in Moscow, Assad was quoted by a sympathetic Lebanese television channel as saying he would defy Israel, the United States and Arab powers who oppose him: “The recent Israeli aggressions expose the extent of the complicity between the Israeli occupier, regional countries and the West in promoting the current events in Syria,” he said.

“The Syrian people and their heroic army … are capable of confronting this Israeli adventure, which represents one of the faces of terrorism that is targeting Syria every day.”

While showing little desire to embroil U.S. forces in Syria after winding down engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama has rejected criticism that he might back out of a commitment to act if Assad crossed a “red line” of using chemical weapons.

On Tuesday, he pointed to the killing of Osama bin Laden and of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, brought down by U.S.-backed rebels, as evidence that “we typically follow through on our commitments”. It is still unclear if chemical weapons were used.

The chaos in Syria, where a fifth of the 25 million population has been driven from homes, was underlined by the latest incident of rebels taking U.N. peacekeepers hostage on the ceasefire line with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned the incident and called for the four Filipinos’ immediate release. They were detained as they patrolled close to an area where 21 Filipino observers were held for three days in March.

The Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade said they were taken in for their own safety during clashes in the area.

More widely, the violence in a religiously and ethnically diverse country at the heart of the Arab and Muslim world has inflamed a confrontation between Iran and its fellow Shi’ite allies like Hezbollah on the one hand and the Sunni Arab powers, including U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, who back the Sunni rebels against Assad’s Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

Iran, at daggers drawn with Israel and the West over its nuclear programme, warned of unforeseeable consequences if Assad were toppled and said only a political settlement to Syria’s civil war would avoid a regional conflagration.

“God forbid, if there is any vacuum in Syria, these negative consequences will affect all countries,” Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in Jordan. “No one knows what will happen.”

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland in Washington, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Arshad Mohammed, Timothy Heritage, Alexei Anishchuk and Steve Gutterman in Moscow; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Alison Williams)

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State John Kerry announced the agreement after talks in Moscow, despite their countries’ differences over Syria, and said the Damascus government and the rebels fighting it should be invited.

The aim is to revive an agreement to create a transitional government that was reached in Geneva last June but was never put into force because it left open the question of what would happen to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“The alternative (to a negotiated solution) is that there is even more violence. The alternative is that Syria heads closer to an abyss, if not over the abyss and into chaos,” Kerry told a joint news conference with Lavrov.

“The alternative is that the humanitarian crisis will grow. The alternative is that there may be even a break up of Syria,” said Kerry, who earlier held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.

More than 70,000 people have been killed in more than two years of violence in Syria since the start of an uprising against Assad and his government.

Russia has been a staunch ally of Assad, blocking new sanctions against Syria at the United Nations and supplying the government with arms. But referring to Assad, Lavrov said Moscow was not concerned by the fate of particular individuals.

“The task now is to convince the government and all the opposition groups … to sit at the negotiating table,” he said.

Kerry said the conference should be held “as soon as is practical – possibly and hopefully by the end of the month”. Neither said where it might take place.

Although the United States has said Assad should not be part of a transitional government in Syria, Kerry said the decision on who takes part in it should be left to the Syrians.

Lavrov said the aim would be “to persuade the government and the opposition together … to fully implement the Geneva communiqué” on creating a transitional government.

Both Russia and the United States have made clear that peace efforts have been stepped up because of growing concern that the violence could spread beyond Syria. Israel carried out air strikes against targets around Damascus on Sunday.

Kerry said there would be “a growing crescendo of nations who will want to push for a peaceful resolution, rather than the chaos that comes with the break up of a country”.

He said the fate of U.S. legislation calling for the United States to arm the Syrian rebels would depend on any evidence on the use of chemical weapons in the conflict as well as on what progress is made towards a political resolution.

“So much will depend on what happens over the course of these next weeks as to what will happen to that particular legislation,” he said.

(Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Steve Gutterman and Alison Williams)

One, that a major sporting event makes a prime target for terrorism; and, two, that Chechens and other Muslim peoples of Moscow’s restive Caucasus mountain provinces around Sochi nurse deep historic grievances that pose a constant risk of violence.

In the six years since it won the right to host the Games next February, Russia has shown as much determination to protect athletes, spectators – and its own international image – from any form of attack, as it has in building the grand ski and ice venues now being completed in the hills above President Vladimir Putin’s favored vacation spot on the palm-fringed Black Sea.

But bringing the Games to the Caucasus, whose ancient ethnic and religious resentments helped mould the Chechen Tsarnaev brothers accused of wreaking havoc on their adopted city last week, has given the enterprise an added dimension of danger.

As Yegor Engelhard, an independent Moscow security analyst, put it: “It’s almost like having the Olympics in Beirut.”

In an area where much blood has been shed over identity and history since Soviet communism collapsed, it has not escaped local notice that a key venue is Krasnaya Polyana. That is where the tsar’s armies claimed final victory after a half-century of war to conquer the Muslim Caucasus, 150 years ago next year.

Since Palestinians took Israeli athletes hostage at the 1972 Munich Olympics, hosts have devoted vast resources to security; in general, the remote venues of the winter editions pose fewer headaches than for the likes of last summer’s games in London, an open metropolis which was subjected to intense surveillance and saw anti-aircraft missiles deployed on apartment blocks.

But Moscow is taking no half measures around Sochi and officials believe they had done enough to keep the Games safe, well before Boston provided a timely reminder of the risks.

“We aren’t taking any special measures because of what happened in Boston, but we are looking at a whole set of potential threats,” said Andrei Pilipchuk, a spokesman for the Russian Interior Ministry. “We’ve been carrying out tests all year to improve the way we counter them.”

Murad Batal al-Shishani, a London-based independent expert on the insurgency in the North Caucasus, said Russian agencies, which have not always coordinated well in recent times, should by now be well prepared for the threats they may face: “Russian authorities (had) enough time to take security measures, therefore it will be a challenge … to attack,” he said.

SCANNERS AND COSSACKS

Heavy security is nothing new in Sochi: a resort city straggling along the coast with health spas built for Soviet workers, Putin’s motorcades, holding up traffic, are a familiar sight. More novel are the metal scanners checking all passengers at the main rail station, and, especially, the Cossack patrols.

Heirs to tsarist-era frontiersmen, self-styled Cossacks in trademark lambskin hats and military epaulettes have been roaming Sochi for weeks at the behest of local officials, though it is unclear whether the role of such groups, viewed by some as racist vigilantes, extends beyond assuaging public anxiety.

From June 1, more than eight months before the Games begin, the entire area will be subjected to even tighter – though publicly unspecified – controls to protect venues from militants who have made world headlines for two decades with spectacular, and usually bloody, mass hostage-takings and bombings in Russia.

While the Kremlin may not emulate its Soviet predecessors who simply rounded up and expelled “undesirables” from Moscow when they held the 1980 summer Olympics there, its forces are used to a free, and fairly heavy, hand in monitoring movement.

There is resentment among locals with a massive construction project they believe benefits only a well-connected few; but, especially after Boston, many in Sochi, whose 340,000 people are overwhelmingly non-Muslim ethnic Russians, do welcome whatever security the government provides.

“I’ve seen more police patrols since the attacks in the USA. We have to learn from what happened to them,” said Alexander Feoktistov, 59, as he worked at his souvenir stand in Sochi, already selling stuffed animals bearing the Games logos.

“The militants could pose a direct threat to the Olympics if they wanted to. They would only have to cross those mountains.”

In fact, crossing the virtually trackless Caucasus range, whose peaks rise above 5,000 meters (16,000 feet), in winter, is no mean feat; more vulnerable may be approaches to the coastal strip from the lawless, breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia, just a few miles from the main access road to the ski venues.

Since Putin crushed Chechen separatists’ hold on Grozny over a decade ago, conflicts continue to simmer across the Caucasus, from Dagestan in the east, where Tamerlan Tsarnaev spent time last year, to western areas near Sochi that are home to several ethnic and linguistic groups historically known as Circassians.

Nationalist claims to independence that dominated the 1990s as other Soviet republics broke away have given way to calls for a pan-Caucasus Islamic state, some from those who have fought with Arabs or Afghans under the banner of al Qaeda, others from Muslims who simply view Russian rule as corrupt and oppressive.

So far this year, at least 124 people have died in violence in the region, the authoritative Caucasian Knot website says.

CAUCASUS EMIRATE

While some militants have this month distanced themselves from any anti-American or anti-Western motive the Tsarnaevs may have had, the risk remains real of an attack on foreign visitors to the Olympics, if only to humiliate the arch-enemy, Moscow.

Russia’s most wanted man, the Chechen Doku Umarov who also features on a U.N. list of al Qaeda associates, has declared the Games a target for his Caucasus Emirate. Among previous attacks, he has claimed the derailing of a Moscow-St. Petersburg express train in 2009 and suicide bombings of the Russian capital’s metro in 2010 and busiest airport in 2011 that killed dozens.

Chechens took large groups hostage in the 1990s, at a Moscow theatre in 2002 and a Caucasus school in 2004; North Africans used the tactic just this year, at an Algerian gas plant, and security analyst Engelhard said the Olympics could be a target:

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said.

“The Caucasus Emirate has the motivation to use the grievances of the region to draw attention to their cause and exploit the opportunities the Olympics provide.”

Putin, who spoke last week to U.S. President Barack Obama on counterterrorism issues in the wake of the Boston bombing, has long cited the violence of the likes of Umarov to counter the sympathy Westerners have shown at times toward Caucasus rebels.

For that reason, some militants may remain wary of attacking foreigners, just as they disowned the Boston bombings. Their repeated failure to sway the Kremlin even with the deaths of hundreds of Russian civilians may also discourage some of them.

“People are afraid of that kind of violence in Europe or America,” said one local man as he whisked his bag off the new scanner at Sochi station. Voicing a Russian machismo toward bomb threats, Roman Komaryov added: “Here, we’re not afraid.”

Whether at the Olympics or elsewhere, however, Russians are well aware that the risk can never be entirely eliminated.

Also at the station, heading home to Moscow after a spa vacation at a sanatorium on the Black Sea, railwayman Vladimir Shviginov, 46, recalled that four years ago he had worked on repairing the track after the bombing that derailed the St. Petersburg-bound Nevsky Express, killing 26 people.

“You can try to be as careful as you can,” he said. “But you can never be protected against everyone all the time.”

(Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

Ethnic Chechen Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed in a gunfight with police following a manhunt that shut down Boston on Friday, and his younger brother Dzhokhar, 19, are suspected of carrying out the attack last week.

A trip the elder Tsarnaev made last year to Russia’s volatile North Caucasus, a mountainous region that stretches nearly between the Caspian and Black Seas, has aroused suspicions he might have made contact with militant groups that wage daily violence to establish an Islamist state there.

A statement from militants operating in Dagestan, where the brothers spent time as children, said the Caucasus Emirate which leads the insurgency and is headed by Russia’s most wanted man Doku Umarov was not attacking the United States.

“We are fighting with Russia, which is responsible not only for the occupation of the Caucasus but for monstrous crimes against Muslims,” said the statement said, which did not outright deny any links with the attacks or Tamerlan.

Media reports have said U.S. investigators are looking to see if there is a link between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Chechen-born Umarov, who was placed on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorists in 2010.

Insurgent violence, rooted in two separatist wars between Russian troops and Chechen separatists following the fall of the Soviet Union, occurs regularly across the North Caucasus near Sochi, where Moscow plans to hold the 2014 Winter Olympics.

The statement also cited a previously-released video in which Umarov, one of the last surviving original leaders of the Chechen rebellion that began in the early 1990s, issued a moratorium on attacks on civilians in Russia.

“Even regarding our enemy, the government of Russia, with which the Caucasus Emirate is fighting, the order from the Emir of the Caucasus Emirate Doku Umarov remains valid prohibiting strikes against civilian targets,” the statement read.

The Caucasus Emirate claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport in January 2011 that killed 37 people and for suicide bombings on the Moscow subway that killed 40 people in 2010.

Although 124 people have died in the North Caucasus since the beginning of this year, according to website Caucasian Knot, which tracks the violence, the vast majority of deaths have been militants and security officers.

A combination of religious fervor and anger over corruption and strong arm tactics by local Kremlin-backed rulers against suspected militants are mostly responsible for driving youth into the ranks of the insurgency.

(Reporting by Thomas Grove; Editing by Jason Webb)

So far there has been no claim of responsibility for the
attacks on the Boston Marathon or evidence made public of the
motivations of the suspects, brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev.

Both have left a trail on the Internet suggesting they were
devout Muslims, proud of their Chechen heritage and supportive
of the region’s bid for independence from Moscow.

The Boston attacks could bolster President Vladimir Putin,
who has long argued that Chechen separatists are nothing but
terrorists and sought the West’s support against a common foe.

Their uncle, who said the boys brought “disgrace on the
entire Chechen ethnicity”, said they never lived in Chechnya.
Before coming to the United States they were schooled in
Dagestan, a neighbouring region that was drawn into Chechnya’s
violence during the 1990s and has since become the focal point
for a simmering Islamist insurgency.

Both provinces are part of the North Caucasus, a mountainous
strip of southern Russia populated mainly by Muslim ethnic
minorities, with a history of rebellion against Moscow – and
brutal Russian repression – dating back centuries.

In Tsarist times, Russian forces fought constant wars
against fighters from the Chechen, Dagestani, Ingush and other
ethnic groups. Under Stalin, the entire Chechen people was
deported to distant central Asia as a potentially hostile
nation. Although some returned, some stayed. The Tsarnaevs were
raised in remote Kyrgyzstan.

When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Chechens sought
independence like the people of the 14 other ex-Soviet republics
that left Moscow’s orbit. But Moscow decided to fight rather
than let them leave.

Bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was born in 1993 and given
the same name as Dzhokhar Dudayev, the Chechen secessionist
leader of the time. Dudayev was killed by a Russian missile in
1996 as his rebel forces were inflicting a humiliating defeat on
Russian troops. Pro-independence Chechens still call their
capital Grozny “Dzhokhar” in his honour.

Moscow withdrew its forces after a two-year fight but
Vladimir Putin, then prime minister, sent them back in 1999,
this time crushing the independence movement and putting in
place a hand-picked loyalist leader, whose son Ramzan Kadyrov
now runs the region with an iron fist.

Kadyrov said Chechnya had nothing to do with the Boston
bombings: “The root of evil should be looked for in the United
States,” he said on the Internet. “(The brothers) grew up and
studied in the United States and their attitudes and beliefs
were formed there…. Any attempt to make a connection between
Chechnya and the Tsarnaevs is in vain.”

CIVILIAN DEATHS

The two Chechen wars killed tens of thousands of civilians,
mainly as a result of mass Russian bombardment of the capital
Grozny and villages in the mountains. Hundreds of thousands of
people were driven from their homes.

But Chechen fighters lost the sympathy of the West by
increasingly adopting Islamist rhetoric and the tactics of
ever-deadlier and more brazen attacks on civilians.

In 2002 Chechen fighters seized a Moscow theatre. When
Russian troops injected poison gas and stormed it, 129 hostages
and 41 Chechen fighters were killed.

The most horrific guerrilla attack took place in Beslan
outside Chechnya in 2004. Fighters seized a primary school on
the first day of class, rigged it with explosives and held
hundreds of children hostage. When Russian troops stormed the
building, 331 hostages were killed, half of them children.

Today, the North Causasus region still faces violence from
an insurgency led by an Islamist group, the Caucasus Emirate,
led by a former Chechen independence guerrilla commander, Doku
Umarov. Much of the violence is focused on Dagestan.

The Caucasus Emirate claimed responsibility for a suicide
bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport in January 2011 that
killed 37 people and for suicide bombings on the Moscow subway
that killed 40 people in 2010.

A website which tracks the unrest, Caucasus Knot, says
insurgency-related violence has killed 61 people this year.
Security is an important issue for the 2014 Winter Olympics,
which will be held in Sochi, a peaceful part of the North
Caucasus hundreds of miles from Chechnya.

On his social media web page, Boston bombing suspect
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev jokes about the reputation of people from the
North Caucausus for conflict with the authorities: “A car goes
by with a Chechen, a Dagestani and an Ingush inside. Question:
who is driving?”

The answer: the police.

So far there has been no claim of responsibility for the
attacks on the Boston Marathon or evidence made public of the
motivations of the suspects, brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev.

Both have left a trail on the Internet suggesting they were
devout Muslims, proud of their Chechen heritage and supportive
of the region’s bid for independence from Moscow.

Although it is not clear whether they ever lived in
Chechnya, they were both enrolled in a school in Dagestan, a
neighbouring region that was drawn into Chechnya’s violence
during the 1990s and has since become the focal point for a
simmering Islamist insurgency.

Both provinces are part of the North Caucasus, a mountainous
strip of southern Russia populated mainly by Muslim ethnic
minorities, with a history of rebellion against Moscow – and
brutal Russian repression – dating back centuries.

In Tsarist times, Russian forces fought constant wars
against fighters from the Chechen, Dagestani, Ingush and other
ethnic groups. Under Stalin, the entire Chechen people was
deported to distant central Asia as a potentially hostile
nation. Although some returned, some stayed, and there have been
reports that the Tsarnaevs were raised in remote Kyrgyzstan.

When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Chechens sought
independence like the people of the 14 other ex-Soviet republics
that left Moscow’s orbit. But Moscow decided to fight rather
than let them leave.

Bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was born in 1993 at a time
when Chechnya was pursuing its independence, and his given name
Dzhokhar is that of Dzhokhar Dudayev, the Chechen secessionist
leader of the time. Dudayev was killed by a Russian missile in
1996 as his rebel forces were inflicting a humiliating defeat on
Russian troops.

Moscow withdrew its forces after a two-year fight but
Vladimir Putin, then prime minister, sent them back in 1999,
this time crushing the independence movement and putting in
place a hand-picked loyalist leader whose son now runs the
region with an iron fist.

The two Chechen wars killed tens of thousands of civilians,
mainly as a result of mass Russian bombardment of the capital
Grozny and villages in the mountains. Hundreds of thousands of
people were driven from their homes.

During and after the conflicts, Chechen fighters
increasingly adopted Islamist rhetoric and the tactics of
ever-deadlier and more brazen attacks in Russia, frequently
targetting civilians in mass bombings and hostage takings.

In 2002 Chechen fighters seized a Moscow theatre. When
Russian troops stormed it, 129 hostages and 41 Chechen
guerrillas were killed.

The attacks culminated in the siege of a primary school in
the town of Beslan outside Chechnya in 2004. They rigged the
school with explosives and held children hostage. When Russian
troops stormed the building, 331 hostages were killed, half of
them children.

The attacks in Boston could bolster Putin, now president,
who has long argued that Chechen separatists are nothing but
terrorists and asked for the West’s support.

Today, the North Causasus region still faces violence from
an insurgency led by an Islamist group, the Caucasus Emirate,
led by a former Chechen independence guerrilla commander, Doku
Umarov. Much of the violence is focused on Dagestan.

The Caucasus Emirate claimed responsibility for a suicide
bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport in January 2011 that
killed 37 people and for suicide bombings on the Moscow subway
that killed 40 people in 2010.

Security is an important issue for the 2014 Winter Olympics,
which will be held in Sochi, a peaceful part of the North
Caucasus hundreds of miles from Chechnya.

On his social media web page, Boston bombing suspect
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev jokes about the reputation of people from the
North Caucausus for conflict with the authorities: “A car goes
by with a Chechen, a Dagestani and an Ingush inside. Question:
who is driving?”

The answer: the police.

(Reporting by Thomas Grove, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

In a letter obtained by Reuters on Tuesday and addressed to Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, who is responsible for the 2014 Games, four major companies listed measures they want adopted to help them “secure a minimum return on investment”.

The letter was signed by tycoons Vladimir Potanin and Oleg Deripaska as well as the heads of Russia’s largest bank, state-controlled Sberbank, and state-controlled natural gas export monopoly Gazprom.

It is the latest in a series of complaints investors have made in the face of costs that are expected to make the Sochi Olympics the most expensive ever and shaky prospects for profitability once the Games, championed by President Vladimir Putin, are over.

Measures worked out to support crucial projects related to the Games “turned out to be insufficient to guarantee returns on investment in Olympic venues,” the letter said, without stating what those measures were.

It cited “a series of problems that were revealed during implementation of the projects that not only made construction more costly but also created hindrances to the future effective use of the venues.”

Among the problems it named were the high costs of building in a mountain area with poor infrastructure, uncertainty about the commercial viability of the venues after the Games and the risk of losses after favorable rental rates end in 2015.

A spokesman for Kozak said he was unable to comment immediately on the letter.

FOOTHOLD IN INFRASTRUCTURE

Potanin, whose estimated $14.5 billion fortune makes him Russia’s fourth richest man, told Reuters last year he was seeking government aid for more than $530 million of extra work his company Interros was required to do during construction for his ski resort Rosa Khutor, where downhill events will be held.

Deripaska, whose wealth is estimated at $8.8 billion, wants to recover $50 million in unexpected costs, according to court documents in an arbitration court case filed against Olympstroy, which coordinates construction work.

Deripaska’s projects include a $760 million Olympic village, which will host 3,000 people in 47 buildings, and a 42 km road around venues. He is also spending nearly $300 million to expand Sochi International Airport.

Kozak was previously quoted as saying that private investors had already spent around $25 billion, some half of the final expected cost of the Games.

Contractors speaking on condition of anonymity have said corruption is rampant at Sochi and that many forms of it, including money laundering, often push up the price of construction.

Participation in the Games is likely to help the oligarchs’ construction companies gain a foothold in the country’s lucrative infrastructure market, where spending is expected to remain at seven percent of Russia’s rising GDP until 2018.

But other contractors have said the participation of Deripaska and Potanin, who began their fortunes in privatizations of Soviet assets, is a show of loyalty to Putin, who many Kremlin watchers say calls the final shots in politics as well as business in Russia.

Among the measures the businessmen called for were interest rate subsidies, which Potanin previously said he was requesting on loans, as well as tax breaks on the projects and lower interest rates for renting of land.

In the letter, the company heads suggested they were doing their patriotic duty, saying they had decided to invest despite risks due to the “social nature of the project”.

However, they added, the firms “are at the same time public commercial companies whose aim is to increase the revenues of their shareholders.”

(Additional reporting by Polina Devitt; editing by Mike Collett-White)