London, June 18: Prime Minister Tony Blair today said he would raise the issue of human rights abuses in Chechnya in an upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but said he also supported Moscow's efforts to fight terrorism. "I always raise the issue of Chechnya with President Putin, but I do so in a way that also recognises this point - that as a result of terrorism coming out from extremists based in Chechnya, the Russian people have also suffered a very great deal,'' Blair said in the House of Commons.

Conservative party lawmaker Crispin Blunt pressed Blair on the issue during the prime minister's weekly question-and-answer session in parliament, saying Russian security forces had been responsible for the deaths of more than 100,000 people in the Chechen conflict.

Blair agreed it was important to discuss human rights, but said Britain must also support Putin's anti-terror efforts.

"It's worth just pointing out that when we finally won the conflict in Iraq, some of those people that were still offering resistance were in fact from Chechnya, extremists who were based there," Blair said.

Bureau Report