LONDON, Feb 3 (AFP) - Britain's Channel 4 news said Thursday it would air an exclusive interview in which Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev threatens further attacks against Russia, despite a demand by Moscow to drop the broadcast.
"We are going ahead," said Fiona Railton, a spokeswoman for the news outlet, referring to the interview to be broadcast at 1900 GMT Thursday with the outlaw, who has claimed responsibility for last year's Beslan school massacre.
In the footage, recorded a month ago, Basayev said similar operations to the Beslan hostage crisis in which more than 340 people died would be staged because of Russia's refusal to leave Chechnya.
Earlier, Russia called on Britain to halt the emission, arguing that it amounted to dangerous propaganda for a terrorist, but extracts from the interview -- Besayev's first since the Beslan siege -- are already on Channel 4's website and in The Times newspaper.
The news outlet argued that broadcasting a controversial interview did not amount to condoning it, pointing to other instances such as the airing of videos by terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.
"We recognise of course that Shamil Basayev's views will be regarded worldwide as repugnant, but we reject utterly any notion that we are being irresponsible," Channel 4 News said in a statement.
Basayev, who is believed to be hiding in the mountains of southern Chechnya, speaks in the interview of future mayhem similar to the siege at a primary school in Beslan, North Ossetia, last September where 344 people -- half of them school children -- died in explosions and fighting with security forces.
"Cynical though it may look, we are planning these operations, and we will conduct them, if only to show the world again and again, the true face of the Russian regime," he said in excerpts carried on Channel 4 News' website.
While promising to put himself on trial when the time comes, Basayev warned that for now all Russians remained a target.
"Russian citizens are accomplicies of this war, it may be that they have no weapons in their hands," he said.
"They are not peaceful people for us, peaceful people for us are those that do not pay taxes for this war, people who do not participate and who speak out against this."
Hoping to stop the broadcast, the Russian embassy in Britain appealed to the British authorities and faxed a statement with the request to Channel 4 News.
"The Russian representatives pointed to the negative consequences of permitting propaganda of terrorist views," a foreign ministry statement in Moscow said.
"Such an irresponsible move to offer a wide audience to the threats of a bandit who is wanted by Interpol and on the list of the UN Security Council's counter-terrorism committee, is counter to the efforts of the international community in the fight against terrorism," it said.
A spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office said she was looking into the matter.
Wearing a black T-shirt with "Anti-Terror" written in white Cyrillic letters, the bearded Basayev says that he believes the Kremlin, not himself, is the terrorist, according to The Times.
He denounces the "bloody slaughter that is ranging in our land" while cradling what he describes as a six-barrelled grenade launcher.
Referring to the Beslan massacre, which ended in a fierce gunfight, Basayev said: "To be honest I am even shocked by what happened there and am still in a state of shock after it."
According to The Times, the militant, who looked to be in good health, recorded the interview in Russian last month at an undisclosed location and the video was given to a journalist in the Middle East.
02/03/2005 18:11 GMT - AFP