Russia says has reduced terrorism acts -spy chief

MOSCOW, June 5 (Reuters) The head of Russia's main intelligence agency said today that the authorities had succeeded in greatly reducing terrorism in Russia.

Nikolai Patrushev, a 55-year-old career spy who succeeded Russian President Vladimir Putin as head of the Federal Security Servie (FSB) in 1999, has overseen sharp annual rises in the agency's budget.

''As a result of the joint effort of government at all levels, law enforcement agencies and civic society the number of terrorist activities has dropped by around a half since last year,'' news agencies quoted him saying at a meeting.

The north Caucasus is the main breeding ground for Russian extremism. Two wars in Chechnya since 1994 between Russian soldiers and Muslim rebels have killed thousands, turned many more into refugees and destroyed the region's economy.

Analysts here generally view upbeat assessments of security issues by officials with some scepticism.

But the Levada Centre, an independent pollster, found in March that Putin's ratings for his handling of Chechnya had risen sharply compared to previous years, with positive assessments outweighing negative ones for the first time.

There have been no headline-grabbing acts by Chechen rebels since the 2004 Beslan school siege when 334 people died, half of them children. Prominent Chechen guerrilla leaders have also been killed by the authorities.

In an article for the US-based Jamestown Foundation's bulletin on Chechnya, Andrei Smirnov agreed that Chechen terrorist acts had slowed but he said the reason may also have been a change of rebel tactics.

''It is likely that following the horror of Beslan, the rebels lost all interest in terrorist activities because it brings them nothing and leads only to further political isolation,'' he wrote.

CHECHNYA As prime minister in 1999 Putin sent Russian soldiers back into Chechnya to defeat a rebel army which had taken control of the capital Grozny.

Sporadic fighting still continues although rebels have been pushed back into the mountains and only fight in small-scale skirmishing. The war, the Kremlin says, has been won.

Alexei Malashenko, an analyst at the Moscow branch of the Carnegie Centre, said Putin deserved some credit for his handling of the Chechen war.

''Putin promised that he would end it and he has more or less achieved that,'' he said. ''And terrorism has also dropped.'' Winning in Chechnya had been a major foundation of Putin's leadership of Russia. He steps aside next year after eight years in power and wants to leave a secure legacy alongside his huge popularity, analysts say.

But Moscow-based analyst Pavel Felgenhauer dismissed Patrushev's comments as self-serving.

''It's classic Soviet bureaucratic stuff, saying you are doing well but things could be even better if you had more power,'' he said.

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