Chechen prime minister says rebel leader Sadulayev killed

MOSCOW (AP) - Police killed Chechen rebel leader Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev during a special operation Saturday in the city of Argun, Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov said, according to Russian news agencies.

Sadulayev had succeeded Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, who was killed by Russian forces last year. Sadulayev's killing, if confirmed, would be further evidence that the rebels' position is weakening.

"We must decisively end international terrorism in the whole of the North Caucasus," the RIA-Novosti news agency quoted Kadyrov as saying.Sadulayev, a fundamentalist field commander, was relatively unknown outside rebel circles. He had served as a judge of the Chechen rebels' Shariat committee - an extension of the Islamic court established under Maskhadov when he was Chechnya's elected president in the 1990s Chechnya's separatist movement initially was rooted in nationalist sentiment, but in recent years has taken on a growing Islamic cast.

Ekho Moskvy radio had said Russian prosecutors considered him the main organizer of the 2001 kidnapping of Kenneth Gluck of New York City, who worked for Doctors Without Borders in southern Russia.

Gluck was freed after 25 days.

The radio station also said Maskhadov had called Sadulayev the co-organizer of a 2004 raid on police and security installations in the Russian republic of Ingushetia, which killed some 90 people.