Russia Mourns, Putin Defiant

Mourners carried caskets, wreaths and once-cherished toys to the fast-growing town cemetery for a third day of burials in this southern Russian town on Tuesday, and Russian President Vladimir Putin denied a link between Russia's policies in Chechnya and the hostage-taking that claimed more than 350 lives.

In an interview late Monday with foreign journalists and academics, Putin again rejected Western calls for negotiations with Chechen rebel representatives, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported.

"Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?" the Guardian quoted Putin as saying sarcastically.

"You find it possible to set some limitations in your dealings with these bastards, so why should we talk to people who are child-killers?"

Putin said foreigners should have "no more questions about our policy in Chechnya" after the attackers shot children in the back, and said the Chechen cause was aimed at undermining all of southern Russia and majority-Muslim regions of the country.

"This is all about Russia's territorial integrity," Putin was quoted as saying.

He also said his government would conduct an internal investigation but not a public one — warning that a parliamentary probe could turn into "a political show." Two opposition politicians had called Monday for an investigation, including into the questions of whether the authorities had prior information about planned terrorist attacks, and what the government was doing to stabilize the situation in Chechnya.

Beslan's streets were crowded with funeral processions Tuesday. At the muddy cemetery, where grave-diggers have opened up two new tracts over the past three days, relatives opened the tiny coffin of 8-year-old Vasily Reshetnyak, touching his forehead and kissing him goodbye. One of his favorite toys, a red car, was placed alongside the body.

A Russian Orthodox priest chanted prayers as the coffin was lowered into the grave, under a cross made of metal pipes. A picture of the boy, with bright blue eyes, was placed nearby.

The mourners' pain was made sharper by their belief that the Russian government lied about their tragedy from the start, reports CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.

In Vladikavkaz, the North Ossetian capital about 18 miles north of Beslan, hundreds of people gathered on central Freedom Square to protest against terrorism and to castigate local authorities for failing to prevent last week's tragedy.

"Today we will bury our children and tomorrow we will come here and throw these devils out of their seats, from the lowest director up to ministers and the president," said one of the speakers, who refused to identify himself to reporters.

"Corrupt authority is a source of terrorism," said a poster held above in the crowd. Along with thin wax candles, which they lit and placed along the square, protesters distributed fliers calling for North Ossetian President Alexander Dzasokhov to step down.

Russian state television repeatedly broadcast footage of anti-terrorist marches and memorials held around the world after the Beslan tragedy, and summoned people to an anti-terrorist protest to be held Tuesday afternoon on Moscow's Red Square. The critical Gazeta.ru Web site commented that there was "no doubt that its organizers, in the first place, will express solidarity not with the victims of terrorist acts ... but with President Vladimir Putin."

Militants seized the school at Beslan on Sept. 1, the day after a suicide bomb attack outside a Moscow subway station that killed eight, and the near-simultaneous crash of two Russian jetliners a few days prior to that after what officials believe were explosions on board. The crashes took 90 lives. Chechen separatists are suspected in both attacks.

A prosecutor said the militants belonged to a group led by radical Chechen rebel Shamil Basayev. A man identified by authorities as a detained hostage-taker said on state TV that he was told Basayev and separatist former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov were behind the attack.

Mikhail Lapotnikov, a senior investigator in the North Caucasus prosecutors' office, said on Channel One television that investigators had established the assailants were "the core of Basayev's band" and had taken part in a June attack — also blamed on Basayev — targeting police and security officials in neighboring Ingushetia.

The detainee, identified by a lawyer as Nur-Pashi Kulayev, said on both state-run channels that he and other members of the group were told the goal of the raid was "to unleash a war on the whole of the Caucasus" — the same thing President Vladimir Putin said was the attackers' aim.

On Sunday, Channel One showed the detainee looking frightened as he was manhandled by masked law enforcement officers and swearing to Allah that he didn't shoot women and children.

After the siege ended Friday, Russian news agencies cited unidentified security sources as saying that the planners of the raid were believed to have scouted at least two schools in Beslan.

The official death toll of the three-day siege-which ended in explosion, fire and a gunbattle, stood at 335, plus 30 attackers; the regional health ministry said 326 of the dead had been hostages, and the Emergency Situations Ministry said 156 of the dead were children. Eleven special forces soldiers were killed, and some were being buried Tuesday in Moscow.

North Ossetia's deputy health minister Taimuraz Revazov told Interfax news agency that 332 people remained hospitalized Tuesday, including 23 who had been sent to Moscow and 11 in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don.

At the morgue in Vladikavkaz, 110 bodies remained unidentified, said Natalia Oleinik, head of the forensic department. The bodies, many of them charred, were laid out in black plastic bags behind the building.

Channel One said the hostage-takers included Kazakhs, Chechens, Arabs, Ingush and Slavs.

Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky said on Tuesday there was no evidence that law enforcement officials had helped the attackers reach Beslan, according to Interfax.