Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by telephone on Saturday with US President George W. Bush as the United States geared up to retaliate for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
The Kremlin said the two leaders had discussed the global situation after hijacked airliners smashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov told Russian television, meanwhile, that Putin and Bush had talked for about an hour. He did not go into details.
The United States has sent heavy bombers and fighters to the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, within striking distance of Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden, who Bush believes was behind the suicide strikes, is thought to be hiding.
Russia's Interfax news agency quoted "informed sources" in Tashkent as saying that two US C-130 military transports had landed in the Uzbek capital, delivering 100 troops, intelligence equipment and other material.
However, an Uzbek military official who declined to be named told Reuters that no US armed forces transporters had landed at any airport in the country.
Tashkent has offered to cooperate with the United States but taken no decision on what form that might take.
PUTIN MEETS TOP SECURITY AIDES
It was unclear whether Bush or Putin had initiated Saturday's phone call, although the two men have spoken several times since the suicide hijackings which 6,800 people dead and missing.
Putin, who is in the Black Sea holiday resort of Sochi, spent much of the day discussing the situation with his top security ministers. The Russian leader has backed Washington's right to retaliate for the attacks but said any action must abide by international law.
Moscow has given no indication of what support it may offer the United States, but the chief of the military general staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, ruled out participation in any strikes.
Ivanov said Kvashnin had met officials from the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Dushanbe, capital of Afghanistan's neighbour Tajikistan.
"As well as dealing with other matters, (Kvashnin) met representatives of the Northern Alliance, a grouping which over the past few years has been opposing, and is opposing, the Taliban regime," Ivanov said in comments carried on state-run RTR television.
"Doubtless it is a secret to no one that Russia, and a number of other states, have for a number of years been giving the Northern Alliance not only moral but other aid."
Ivanov linked an upsurge in separatist attacks in rebel Chechnya to events in the United States. They were an attempt to distract Russia from taking an active part in the international fight against terrorism being marshalled by Washington in the wake of the September 11 attacks, he said.
(China Daily 09/23/2001)
