Reward offered to catch Russian journalist's killers

MOSCOW, Oct 9 (Reuters) The newspaper where slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya worked has offered almost 1 million dollars for information leading to her killers amid widespread international condemnation of the murder.

A gunman shot Politkovskaya, one of President Vladimir Putin's strongest critics, four times as she brought her shopping home to her Moscow apartment on Saturday evening. The 48-year-old mother-of-two died on the spot.

Putin today gave the first official Russian reaction to Politkovskaya's murder, although his comments were confined to an account of a telephone conversation with U.S. President George W.

Bush.

''In the course of the conversation Putin stressed that Russia's law-enforcement bodies will take every step to investigate objectively the tragic death of the journalist Politkovskaya,'' a Kremlin statement said.

Russian investigators and commentators believe the killing was motivated by Politkovskaya's fiercely critical reporting, which won her numerous international awards.

Politkovskaya's newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, published a front page bordered in black today with a large picture of the murdered reporter. ''She was beautiful,'' its story began.

Novaya Gazeta's publishers, who include former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, offered a reward of 25 million roubles (933,500 dollars) to anyone who could help find those who ''ordered the killing, organised it and carried it out''.

''The murder is a challenge to basic values of our society,'' the newspaper said on its Web site www.novayagazeta.ru.

PRESS FREEDOM Politkovskaya's death has drawn international condemnation.

President Bush said she was a fearless journalist who had exposed human rights abuses and corruption.

Bush urged Moscow ''to conduct a vigorous and thorough investigation to bring to justice those responsible''. British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a similar demand.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says Russia is the third-deadliest country in the world for journalists in the past 15 years, behind only Iraq and Algeria.

Forty-two journalists have died in Russia since 1992, many slain in contract-style killings which have remained unsolved.

Closed-circuit camera footage showed the chief suspect -- a tall man in a baseball cap entering a lift at Politkovskaya's apartment building just after the journalist, authorities said.

Editors said Politkovskaya was working on a story about human rights abuses by government forces fighting separatist rebels in the violent southern province of Chechnya at the time of her death. But they had not received it when she was killed.

Although Politkovskaya's aggressive reporting of atrocities in Chechnya brought her international fame, the mainstream Russian media rarely gave her airtime.

Novaya Gazeta has a circulation of 171,000 in a country of 140 million people and is not widely read outside the intellectual elite. Most Russians get their news from television, where all the main channels toe a pro-Kremlin line.

Russian television has reported Politkovskaya's death prominently, noting that she had won international recognition for criticising government policies in Chechnya. But it did not mention her withering and highly personal criticism of Putin.

''Putin has by chance got his hands on enormous power and has used it to catastrophic effect,'' Politkovskaya wrote in her book ''Putin's Russia'' which was not published in her homeland.

''I dislike him because he does not like people. He despises us ... he believes he can do anything he likes with us, play with us as he sees fit, destroy us as he sees fit.'' Reuters DKB DB2141