Nurtai Dutbaev, who is chairman of Kazakhstan\'s National Security Committee (KNB), said on 9 September that the KNB has no information that any ethnic Kazakhs were involved in the bloody school siege in Beslan, in Russia\'s republic of North Ossetia. Noting that the KNB has been in contact with Russian security services from the outset, Dutbaev stressed that \"the situation has not yet been fully clarified.\" He said initial reports spoke of a Ukrainian-born ethnic Kazakh with Russian citizenship who went over to the side of Chechen militants after fighting in Chechnya for the Russian Army in 1994. Later reports indicated, however, that the alleged Beslan hostage taker was an ethnic Chechen who went by the nickname \"The Kazakh.\" Dutbaev also said press reports of a group of terrorists headed for Russia through Kazakhstan were entirely false. \"Our [Russian] colleagues have said that someone leaked false information to the press,\" Dutbaev added. (Kazakhstan Today)