MOSCOW (AFP) - Chechnya`s feared warlord Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for the deadly school hostage taking in southern Russia that killed more than 330 people.

Rebels commanded by Basayev have "carried out a series of successful military operations," including "the operation in the town of Beslan," said a letter signed by the 39-year-old and posted on the rebel website kavkazcenter.com.

Its authenticity could not be immediately verified, but Chechen rebels often post their statements on the site.

Russian considers the rebel leader its public enemy number one and has offered a 10 milllion-dollar reward both for Basayev and another Chechen rebel chief, Aslan Maskhadov.

The letter was posted two weeks after the two-day hostage taking at a school in Beslan ended in a chaotic firefight between rebels and security forces that killed at least 339 people.

Chechnya`s most notorious warlord placed the ultimate blame for the carnage on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who he said ordered the school to be stormed.

"The Kremlin bloodsucker destroyed and injured 1,000 children and adults, having given the order to storm the school for imperialist ambitions," the letter said.

"The storming was initiated by Russia`s security services," it said.

Basayev said his men had been ready to release their hostages if their demands -- the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya and the termination of the five-year-old war there -- were met.

He also dismissed world-wide criticism of the hostage-taking, accusing the world of adopting double standards when it came to the killing of Chechen civilians during the Chechen war.

"We ask the whole world: `Ok, so we are bad guys ... who should be destroyed. But why have ... thousands of peaceful (Chechen) civilians been destroyed and continue to be destroyed to this day?"

"We are being fought without any rules and with direct tolerance of the whole world," he said. "We are not bound by any obligations to anyone and will fight as we see fit, according to our rules."

"Today when the whole world `with angry outrage` is demanding that we stop, we laugh and ask: `and what have you done for us that we should listen to you?`"

Basayev said that he had written a letter to Putin that the rebels carrying out the operation had passed on through intermediaries.

In it, he said he offered Russia security from terror acts in exchange for Chechnya`s independence.

"`We are offering you a reasonable peace on a mutually favorable principle -- independence in return for security,`" Basayev said he wrote in his letter.

He said that 33 rebels, including two women, had carried out the Beslan hostage taking, which had cost him 8,000 euros (9,600 dollars) to organize.

"We didn`t have enough money to carry it out in Moscow," he said.

The group comprised 14 Chechens, nine Ingush, three ethnic Russians, two Arabs, two Ossetians, and three other non-ethnic Russians, Basayev said, according to the Internet site.

He also denied Moscow`s assertions that he and his men were linked to al-Qaeda.

"I do not personally know (Osama) bin Laden," he said. "I don`t receive money from him, though I wouldn`t refuse the offer."

Basayev also claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 10 people at a Moscow subway stop on August 31, the day before the Beslan hostage taking, and for the downing of two airplanes that occurred a week prior and killed 90 people.

The plane attacks had previously been claimed by an Islamic group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades in a statement posted on a website.

Basayev, whom photos show with a black bushy beard, shaved head and ever-present military fatigues, has claimed responsibility for some of the most spectacular terror acts on Russian soil.

In the middle of the first Russo-Chechen war in June 1995, he and his men took 1,500 people hostage at a hospital in Budyonnovsk in southern Russia. Some 150 people died as a result of the siege, most of them killed by bullets from Russian soldiers.

In October 2002, his men took more than 800 people hostage at a theater in Moscow. Some 130 hostages were killed, most from a deadly gas that Russian forces pumped into the theater in a raid to free the hostages.