A company in northern Germany sold about 3,000 tons of fatty acids contaminated with industrial residue — including dioxin — to companies making animal feed, said Holger Eichele, a spokesman for Germany’s Ministry for Agriculture and Consumer Protection.

In all, the fatty acids were delivered to 25 companies in five of Germany’s 16 states, Eichele said.

Tens of thousands of tons of feed containing the contaminated acids were then delivered to poultry farms in several German states, with a heavy concentration in Lower Saxony.

About 1,000 farms have been shut in Lower Saxony and hundreds have been shut in other states, Eichele said.

In addition, about 130,000 possibly contaminated eggs have been exported from a company in Saxony-Anhalt to a food company in Netherlands, where they were to be used in industrial food production, he said.

The company that sold the fatty acids was raided Wednesday by police, who confiscated documents but arrested no one, the state prosecutor’s office in Schleswig-Holstein told CNN.

Dioxins are a family of toxic chemicals that share a similar chemical structure and have been characterized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as likely human carcinogens.

State-run Press TV quoted Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of the National Security and Foreign Policy in the Iranian Parliament, as saying legislators would meet on Sunday to “push for legislation to reduce” Iran’s relations with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

He did not offer details of a likely response to Wednesday’s Security Council action, approved by 12 of the 15 members. Brazil and Turkey opposed the measures, and Lebanon abstained.

China supported the sanctions and on Thursday, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, sharply criticized Beijing, saying Chinese support for the new measures would “affect its standing in the Muslim world.”

“There was a time when China called the United States a paper tiger,” he said. “I am perplexed that China accepted the resolution against Iran in the Security Council. What name does China deserve?” he asked, accusing China of “two-faced behavior” in its divergent policies toward the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran.

For their part, Turkey and Brazil had reached a contentious deal with Iran last month on an exchange of nuclear fuel that they hoped would avert a worsening confrontation with Tehran. In a speech on Thursday, Turkish prime minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan called the Security Council vote an error.

“We would not want to participate in such a mistake because history will not forgive us,” he told a meeting of ministers from the Arab League, Reuters reported.

The sanctions are designed to curb military purchases, trade and financial transactions carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which controls the nuclear program and has taken a more central role in running the country and the economy.

Although Iran insists that its nuclear efforts are strictly for peaceful purposes, its actions have raised suspicions in the West that it Tehran is seeking to build nuclear weapons.

The nuclear relationship is governed by formal agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency that provide for inspectors to visit nuclear facilities, such as the main, publicly known enrichment plant at Natanz, and require Iran to notify the nuclear body of its plans to build new facilities.

The agency offered no immediate comment on the Iranian threats.

Western officials familiar with the nuclear debate, who spoke in return for anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters, said that I.A.E.A. inspectors were currently able to visit Iranian facilities, albeit within a “minimal level” of cooperation.

In the past, the officials said, Iranian threats to downgrade ties to the I.A.E.A. have been followed by measures to curb inspectors’ authority and to slow notification of its intentions. The newest threats could lead to further restrictions on inspectors’ visits, the officials said.

The officials said Western governments believed that Iran might also react to the sanctions by expanding its enrichment process at Natanz, doubling the number of centrifuges producing uranium enriched to 20 percent.

Currently, Iran is using a cascade of 164 centrifuges — machines that enrich, or purify, uranium for use in bombs or reactors — to produce uranium to 20 percent purity. But it has a second cascade of the same size that has not yet been activated, the officials said.

In February, Iran also said it planned to build 10 more nuclear-fuel enrichment plants — two within the next year — and had identified “close to” 20 sites for such facilities.

Earlier this month, I.A.E.A. inspectors reported that Iran has produced over 5,300 pounds of low-enriched uranium, all of which would have to undergo further enrichment before it could be converted to bomb fuel.

Until recently, all of Iran’s uranium had been enriched to only 4 percent, the level needed to run nuclear power reactors. While enrichment to 20 percent purity does not allow Iran to build a weapon, it moves the country closer to that goal.

Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders said he wanted to be part of government.

The election saw the centre-right Liberal Party (VVD) emerging as the largest party, one seat ahead of the centre-left Labour Party.

The Christian Democrat party of outgoing Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende suffered a big defeat.

Weeks of coalition negotiations are expected to follow the election.

With more than 99% of votes counted, the VVD had 31 of 150 seats, while Labour had 30.

As the party with the most seats, VVD leader Mark Rutte could now become the first prime minister from his political camp since World War I.

Headscarf tax

The unexpected big winner was the anti-Islam Freedom Party, the PVV, which took its number of seats from nine in the last parliament to 24 – its best-ever finish.

The campaign had been dominated by a debate over the economy, which was thought to have eclipsed immigration as an election issue.

But the strong showing for the Freedom Party, led by the controversial Geert Wilders, is a sign that immigration was still a powerful theme, correspondents say.

Mr Wilders has campaigned to stop the “Islamisation of the Netherlands”.

He wants the Koran banned, and has suggested a tax on headscarves worn by Muslim women.

“Nobody in The Hague can bypass the PVV anymore,” he said on Thursday, AFP news agency reported. “We want to be part of the new government.”

The Netherlands is the first country in the eurozone to vote since a crisis erupted earlier this year over the single European currency, amid concerns about debt in Greece and other southern states.

The Dutch economy was contracting for a year before the country emerged from recession in the third quarter of 2009.

Mr Rutte has advocated steep budget cuts, a pared-down government and a reduction in benefits for immigrants.

“The Netherlands can emerge stronger from the crisis by taking measures now,” he said after the vote.

The VVD, which had 21 seats in the outgoing parliament, had topped opinion polls for several weeks. Labour lost two seats compared with the previous elections in 2006.

Balkenende quits

Final results will not be declared until 15 June, when all overseas votes have been counted.

Without an outright majority in the 150-seat parliament, the VVD and Labour will now have to try to forge a coalition with at least two other parties, the BBC’s Geraldine Coughlan reports from The Hague.

Mr Rutte has reportedly said he would not exclude any party from a possible coalition. During the campaign, he said he would have a coalition in place by 1 July if his party won – though analysts questioned whether this would be possible given the closeness of the result.

After the Christian Democrats plummeted to a historic low, outgoing leader Jan Peter Balkenende resigned his position as party leader and said he was quitting politics – though he also said he would stay on as caretaker prime minister until a new coalition was formed.

The party won 21 seats, 20 fewer than at the last election in 2006.

Mr Balkenende described his party’s crushing election defeat as “disappointing”.

“The outcome is clear. I’ve told the president of our party that I will be resigning as party leader and that I won’t be serving as a member of parliament,” he said.

The election – the fourth since 2002 – was called after the centrist coalition government, between the Christian Democrats and the Labour Party, collapsed in February.

The government fell when Labour withdrew from the coalition after refusing to extend the Dutch contribution to the Nato force, as outgoing PM Balkenende wanted.

Dutch troops are therefore expected to leave Afghanistan by August.

The move followed a crisis meeting between the French Labour Minister, Xavier Darcos, and France Telecom’s chief executive, Didier Lombard.

Both the government and the company have begun to take industrial suicide seriously, says a BBC correspondent.

Mr Lombard said “the infernal spiral” of copycat suicides must be broken.

Unions blame France Telecom's drive for efficiency

Mr Darcos pressed France Telecom to tackle the problem and to listen to its workers.

Unions have blamed tough management methods at the multinational, which was privatised in 1998.

Counselling

But France Telecom says the rate of suicides is statistically not unusual for a company with a 100,000 workforce.

According to the World Health Organization, France had an annual suicide rate of 26.4 for 100,000 men in 2008. The rate for women was 9.2 suicides per 100,000.

The latest suicide occurred on Friday, when a 32-year-old woman leapt to her death at a France Telecom office in Paris.

On Wednesday, a 49-year-old man in Troyes, east of Paris, plunged a knife into his own stomach during a meeting in which he had been told he was being transferred.

He is being treated in hospital.

The unions say a never-ending drive for efficiency is causing emotional havoc in the workforce – especially among older employees recruited when France Telecom was part of the public sector.

Since privatisation in 1998 some 40,000 jobs have gone, and unions say there is pressure on many employees either to leave or to accept new working conditions.

The wave of suicides has triggered protests from France Telecom staff

The management of France Telecom denies that there has been a sudden increase in the suicide rate.

It points out that in the year 2000 there were 28 suicides in the company – a figure which it says is statistically not unusual.

France Telecom says most suicides are prompted by personal, not professional, causes.

However, a BBC correspondent in Paris says the firm concedes that the cultural and organisational changes required by the move from French public monopoly to a competitive multinational were bound to cause stress.

After the latest cases it has promised to hire more counselling staff and to suspend internal job transfers pending new talks with the unions.

Ringleader Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, was jailed for at least 40 years.

Plot “quartermaster” Assad Sarwar, 29, must serve at least 36 years, while Tanvir Hussain, 28, was jailed for at least 32 years at Woolwich Crown Court.

(L to R) Tanvir Hussain, Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar were found guilty

Their aim was a terrorist outrage to “stand alongside” the 9/11 attacks on the US in history, the judge said.

Mr Justice Henriques called the plot “the most grave and wicked conspiracy ever proven within this jurisdiction”.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson said the sentences “reflected the severity of this horrendous plot to kill and maim thousands of people”.

“I’m very pleased the jury gave a sentence that was proportionate to this potential crime,” he said.

“Our police and our national security service is a national asset, they’ve proven that again today.”

The trial heard that at the time of his arrest, Ahmed Ali, of Walthamstow, east London, had identified seven US and Canada-bound flights that were to be attacked within a two-and-a-half-hour period.

“I’m satisfied that there is every likelihood that this plot would have succeeded but for the intervention of the police and the security service,” he said.

“Had this conspiracy not been interrupted, a massive loss of life would almost certainly have resulted – and if the detonation was over land, the number of victims would have been even greater still.”

The judge said that the plot had “reached an advanced stage in its development”, with the men in possession of enough chemicals to produce 20 detonators.

The flights due to be targeted were from London’s Heathrow airport to San Francisco, Washington, New York, Chicago, Toronto and Montreal.

Sarwar had obtained bomb ingredients which he kept at his home and in woods in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.

A flat in the Walthamstow area of north-east London became the men’s bomb factory, where they mixed chemicals that they planned to take onto planes in ordinary sports drinks bottles stored within hand luggage.

The plot prompted the biggest terror investigation ever mounted in the UK.

No emotion

The convicted men displayed no emotion at their sentences, although Ahmed Ali shook his head and appeared angry and frustrated at earlier sentencing remarks from the judge.

“With this plot you sought the attention of the world and now you have it,” Mr Justice Henriques told him.

“You have embraced Islamic extremism and it is that burning extremism that has motivated you throughout this conspiracy and is likely to drive you again.”

E-mails submitted as evidence in the trial had shown that “the ultimate control of this conspiracy lay in Pakistan”, the judge said.

Ahmed Ali, Sarwar and Hussain, from Leyton, east London, had been “high-level executives within this country”.

‘Act of revenge’

The men’s defence had been that they were planning a political stunt, including small explosions intended only to frighten people at airports.

These political demonstrations, they said, would be backed up by a documentary aimed at changing opinion on Western foreign policy.

But Mr Justice Henriques dismissed that claim, saying their intention had been “an act of revenge inspired by extremist Islamic thinking” toward the “governments of several allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan”.

Ahmed Ali, Sarwar and Hussain, were found guilty of conspiracy to murder using explosives on aircraft.

They were also convicted of a more general conspiracy to murder offence.

A fourth man, Umar Islam, 31, convicted of the more general conspiracy to murder charge, was also given a life sentence and will serve a minimum of 22 years in prison.

The men’s arrests in August 2006 caused chaos to the global aviation industry and prompted continuing restrictions to the amount of liquids passengers can take on to aircraft.

This had meant “massive expenditure” and “huge inconvenience for the travelling public” as a direct result of the plot, the judge said.

“Tons of liquids are confiscated from the public on a daily basis at airports,” he said.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, is seeking a retrial of three other men for conspiracy to murder, after the jury failed to reach a verdict on this charge against them.

A hearing on 5 October will decide whether Ibrahim Savant, 28, Arafat Khan, 28, and Waheed Zaman, 25, will face another trial.

Umar S. Israilov’s funeral Jan. 22 in Vienna. He accused Chechnya’s president of torture.

For more than two years, Mr. Israilov, a Chechen in exile, had formally accused Russia’s government of allowing a macabre pattern of crimes in Chechnya. Even by the dark norms of violence in the Caucasus, his accusations were extraordinary.

A rebel fighter turned bodyguard of Ramzan A. Kadyrov, Chechnya’s current president, Mr. Israilov had access to the inner ring of Chechen power. Mr. Kadyrov’s career has been sponsored by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who as president lifted him from obscurity with unwavering Kremlin support.

In written legal complaints, Mr. Israilov described many brutal acts by Mr. Kadyrov and his subordinates, including executions of illegally detained men. One executed man, Mr. Israilov said, had been beaten with a shovel handle by Mr. Kadyrov and Adam Delimkhanov, now a member of Russia’s Parliament. Another prisoner, the defector said, was sodomized by a prominent police officer and at Mr. Kadyrov’s order put to death.

Mr. Israilov said he and others had been tortured by Mr. Kadyrov, who amused himself by personally giving prisoners electric shocks or firing pistols at their feet.

Mr. Kadyrov and Mr. Delimkhanov refused to be interviewed for this article. A spokesman for Mr. Kadyrov released a statement decrying “a large-scale and purposeful campaign” to discredit Chechnya’s president and government. The campaign, the spokesman said, was the “deeply conspiratorial initiative of some ideologists of terrorism and an armed criminal underground.”

Since 1994, Russia’s wars against nationalist and Islamic separatists in Chechnya have been fought with sinister conduct by all sides.

Human rights organizations and independent journalists have documented patterns of abduction, detention, disappearances, collective punishment, extrajudicial executions and the systematic use of torture by Russian and Chechen authorities, including Mr. Kadyrov. The separatists have unapologetically employed terrorist attacks, including on children.

But the character of Mr. Israilov’s allegations was different. He had been an insider. And with his father, Sharpuddi — who says that Mr. Kadyrov illegally detained him for more than 10 months, and that his captors tortured victims with a gas torch — he filed complaints to Russian prosecutors and the European Court of Human Rights in 2006 and 2007.

The Israilovs’ filings, never made public, appear to have been the first formal allegations based on the actions of Mr. Kadyrov, who has been celebrated by the Kremlin as a hero for marginalizing the insurgency in the Republic of Chechnya since 2004.

Taken together, their accounts offer a window into Russia’s counterinsurgency campaign and the climb to power of Chechens in Kremlin favor as the separatists’ influence waned. They also detail efforts by Chechnya’s government to suppress knowledge of its policies through official lies, obstruction and witness intimidation.

Since last year, the Israilovs had cooperated with The New York Times, including by providing copies of sealed court records.

Umar Israilov, 27, was a complicated figure: a participant in a particularly ugly war, motivated at least in part by revenge. The Times spent several months evaluating the allegations by him and his father, examining the charges against the wealth of materials on Chechen human rights abuses, and interviewing supporting witnesses and independent investigators who had examined the Israilov case.

In addition, the newspaper obtained corroborating statements from another government insider and from another victim, who fled Chechnya but remain in hiding; they said they saw Umar Israilov being tortured.

Almost all of the people who assisted asked for anonymity, saying they feared reprisal. Ultimately, The Times postponed publication of the Israilovs’ accounts out of concern for the safety of witnesses and people who helped the investigation, some of whom wanted to relocate.

The threats were palpable. Several of President Kadyrov’s critics have been silenced by violence, including rivals, journalists and former detainees and their relatives.

Moreover, Mr. Israilov told Austrian authorities last year that an agent sent from Russia by Mr. Kadyrov had threatened him. Under questioning by counterterrorism officials, the agent told of his mission to retrieve the whistle-blower, according to a written summary of his interrogation, and said Mr. Kadyrov kept a list of 300 enemies to be killed.

On Jan. 9, after consulting with one of Umar Israilov’s legal advocates, The Times notified Mr. Putin’s office that it sought interviews with Russian officials about these allegations. Mr. Israilov was prepared to publicize his story.

Dmitri Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, declined to comment in detail, saying, “It’s not wise to comment on any rumors.”

On Jan. 13, Mr. Israilov left his apartment, where he had been watching his three young children while his pregnant wife was away, to buy yogurt at a nearby market. Outside, he was confronted by at least two men.

They argued, and one of the men tried to pistol-whip Mr. Israilov, according to Gerhard Jarosch, a spokesman for Austria’s prosecutor. Mr. Israilov bolted. He still had received no protection. In broad daylight on a Vienna street, he ran for his life alone.

One of his pursuers opened fire. Mr. Israilov fell, shot in an arm, a leg and the abdomen, according to Mr. Jarosch. A short while later, he was dead.

A Young Rebel, Caught

For Umar Israilov, the pain of Chechnya’s wars began early. He was herding cows in 1995 near his town, Mesker-Yurt, when it was struck by Russian artillery fire. He hid until the barrage ended. When he returned home, he found his mother’s shrapnel-riddled remains. He was 13.

Mr. Israilov’s anger simmered, he said, but when he asked to join the rebels, they rejected him because of his age. The first war lasted until 1996, when the separatists won limited independence and the Russian Army withdrew.

In 1999, during a nearly lawless period of Chechen self-rule, Mr. Israilov attended a camp at Kurchaloi, his father said. The camp was in a network of jihadist schools run by Shamil Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab, rebel commanders whose drift toward terrorism put them among Russia’s most wanted men.

The Russian Army blitzed Chechnya again in 1999. Mr. Israilov assumed a support role for a guerrilla cell, monitoring Russian troops to help insurgents avoid ambushes and maintaining an arms cache in a cemetery. The Russian military suspected him, he said, and troops searched his relatives’ houses repeatedly. Eventually he joined the insurgency full time.

Mr. Israilov insisted that he had never been in combat or committed violence. Such claims are common among former fighters; his could not be independently verified.

Russian prosecutors, in an attempt to have him extradited last year, claimed he gave insurgents a rifle for an attack on a polling station and helped rig an explosion against a convoy in which a Russian soldier was severely wounded.

Austria denied the extradition request, calling the evidence insufficient.

By early 2003, Mr. Israilov, then 22, was living in a dug-out shelter in the woods. On April 15, he said, he and two other fighters ventured out to buy food and were arrested by pro-Kremlin Chechens.

An ordeal began. After being beaten for two days, he said, the three captives were driven to a boxing club in Gudermes and presented to Mr. Kadyrov. Mr. Israilov’s clothes were bloodstained, his body bruised. His nose had been broken.

Today, Mr. Kadyrov, 32, is Chechnya’s most powerful man. Marginally educated but bristling with intensity and self-confidence, he is not just the republic’s president but also the de facto commander of its sprawling security forces and arbiter of much of its oil flow. He also leads an extravagant personality cult and has officially sponsored a local resurgence in Chechen religion and culture.

As he has seized power, he has borrowed from Stalinism, Sufi Islam and Chechen nationalism to erode the insurgency, bend a frightened society to his will and rebuild the republic at a blur.

Along the way, he has been cast by his critics as Russia’s most sadistic gangster.

He has been accused of crimes capital, carnal and municipal, ranging from murder, torture and kidnapping to cavorting with prostitutes and exacting kickbacks from government workers to build monuments to his father and himself.

He has always denied all the allegations. In interviews since 2004 with The Times, he sometimes laughed at them, and while he called himself “a warrior,” he insisted that he fought only for peace.

“I am a Muslim” he said in 2006, when pressed about allegations of kidnapping.

“A good Muslim would never commit a crime,” he said. “He will always be facing God, and he will always do good to people.”

He added, as he drove a reporter at high speeds through the Chechen capital, Grozny, with assault rifles strewn about his car’s seats: “I am an official person. I am not a bandit.”

On the day Mr. Israilov met him, Mr. Kadyrov was almost unknown. His father, Akhmad H. Kadyrov, formerly a leading separatist mufti, had switched sides in 2000 to ally himself with the Kremlin. The reward was a plum: an appointment to Chechnya’s top administrative post.

Ramzan Kadyrov led his father’s bodyguard, a growing militia of former rebels known as the Presidential Security Service.

The service, a free-wheeling regiment with military, police and intelligence duties, had no basis in Russian law.

“We’ve caught some devils,” one of their captors said to Mr. Kadyrov as he stepped from his gym, Mr. Israilov recalled. Mr. Kadyrov laughed and gave an order: “Take them to the base.”

The Torture Chamber

The town of Tsentoroi was once a rebels’ redoubt. By 2003 it had become an informal seat of power for rebels who changed sides.

Mr. Israilov was driven there, he said, and confined with other detainees in cells outside a weight-lifting center. According to victims and human rights groups, the weight room was one of several torture chambers run by pro-Kremlin Chechens.

That day, Mr. Israilov recalled, officers from the F.S.B., Russia’s domestic intelligence service, beat him and tried to force him to confess to killing at least 17 people. Mr. Israilov said he refused as Mr. Kadyrov watched.

Mr. Kadyrov finally took over. “Ramzan slapped me in the face once; then his guards beat me,” he said. “Ramzan said, ‘Stop it,’ and asked me questions. Then he began beating me again.”

According to Mr. Israilov, he was beaten a few times a week for three months, often after being tied to fitness machines. His torturers wanted information about other rebels, he said. On one occasion, he said, Mr. Delimkhanov, the Kadyrov associate now in Russia’s lower house of Parliament, beat him with a shovel handle just before Mr. Kadyrov twice fired a pistol near his feet. On another occasion, Mr. Israilov said, he was connected to wires and Mr. Kadyrov administered electric shocks. “ ‘That’s the thing,’ ” he recalled Mr. Kadyrov saying with a laugh. “ ‘That’s the thing.’ ”

He was also poked in the leg by unknown men with a heated metal rod, he said, and struck in the lip by a fragment of a ricocheting bullet fired by another unknown man. (Scars on Mr. Israilov’s lip and leg were visible.)

Others faced worse. On his third week in captivity, Mr. Israilov said, a cellmate, Shamil Gerikhanov, was sodomized with a shovel handle by a guard commander.

One night he listened, he said, as Aidamir Gushayev, who had organized a rebel cell’s finances, was interrogated by Mr. Kadyrov. The future president demanded money and grew frustrated. Mr. Israilov heard a gunshot. For a moment, Mr. Israilov recalled, there was silence, and then there were bursts of automatic fire. “It sounded like each bodyguard fired an entire magazine,” he said.

Mr. Kadyrov snarled, “ ‘Gazavat,’ ” he said. The word is Chechen for holy war. It was also the guards’ slang, Mr. Israilov said, for an area where victims were buried in unmarked graves.

Two Conversions

When Mr. Israilov was captured, the insurgency had already lost Grozny, but it remained strong. To defeat it, Russia and Mr. Kadyrov fought militarily. Simultaneously, Mr. Kadyrov mounted a campaign of inducements, amnesty offers, threats and violence against rebels’ families to persuade separatists to change sides.

In the summer of 2003, Mr. Israilov said, the guards led him in shackles to a sauna, where Mr. Kadyrov made an offer: join the presidential security service and live. The alternative, Mr. Israilov said, was clear. He accepted.

Mr. Kadyrov gave him a pistol, according to the court complaint, and Umar Israilov began work in the “kadyrovtsie” — the Kadyrovs’ troops.

Asked later why he did not turn the pistol against a man he said had tortured him, Mr. Israilov replied, “Because I wanted to live.”

As part of its defense against these allegations, Mr. Kadyrov’s office said last month that it had no record of Mr. Israilov’s having served Mr. Kadyrov. Russian prosecutorial records from Chechnya, however, show that Mr. Israilov worked in Mr. Kadyrov’s guard beginning in late 2003.

For about 10 months, Mr. Israilov said, he worked at Tsentoroi. During this time he saw at least 20 illegally detained people tortured, he said, with Mr. Kadyrov participating in several sessions. Many victims were the relatives of the boyeviki, the insurgents.

The sessions Mr. Israilov described aligned with a shift in Russia’s counterinsurgency effort — away from mass detentions and neighborhood sweeps by the Russian Army, to actions by Chechen units against rebels’ families, a form of pinpoint collective punishment.

“Ramzan himself said that the best way to get boyeviki out of the forest was to do it through relatives,” Mr. Israilov said. “It was basically his slogan.”

One day, Mr. Israilov said, he watched the commander who had sodomized his cellmate, Shamil Gerikhanov, plead with Mr. Kadyrov to order the victim killed. “Take him and finish him,” Mr. Kadyrov said. Mr. Gerikhanov was driven away and never seen again, Mr. Israilov said; the rapist, whose first name was Alanbek, was promoted to be a police commander in Grozny.

In early 2004, Mr. Israilov was transferred to his home village to lead a police squad, according to his court file.

Mr. Kadyrov’s stature in Chechnya was rising. His father was assassinated in May, and Mr. Putin, then president, offered him condolences in a meeting broadcast on state television — a clear endorsement of his role as Moscow’s Chechen strongman.

But as the war evolved from a Russian-Chechen fight to an internecine struggle, Mr. Israilov’s father urged him to desert, saying his job required violence against his former friends, who would retaliate. “I told him he could not keep that job without putting everyone in danger,” Sharpuddi Israilov said. That November, using a counterfeit passport bought with bribe money, Umar Israilov and his wife, Madina Sagiyeva, fled to Belarus. There, he said, he traveled to the border and presented his fake passport and $20 to a Belarussian border guard, who let them cross to Poland, where they asked for asylum.

Retaliation

In late 2003, two weeks after Umar Israilov deserted, a police supervisor appeared at a construction company in Grozny where his father worked. The officer told the elder Israilov that Mr. Kadyrov had summoned him, and led him to a car where his wife sat in the back. The police had already searched their apartment, according to court filings, stolen about $6,000 of their savings and left their three children, ages 6 to 12, locked inside. The police were looking for Umar and his weapon.

Sharpuddi Israilov and his wife were driven to Tsentoroi, where they learned that his son’s sister-in-law had also been detained. Within minutes, Mr. Israilov was knocked down, beaten and dragged to the weight room, according to him and his wife.

He was handcuffed to a pool table and his legs were lashed to a fitness machine, Mr. Israilov said. Eight Chechens began to beat, kick and stomp on him, he said. Three teeth were knocked out.

“They watched until the moment when I was about to pass out; then they stopped and asked a question,” he said. “They did not want a corpse. They wanted information.”

He passed out. When he woke, the men told him they had learned that his son was in Poland. They attached wires to one toe on each foot, he said, and began to shock him, pouring water on him to intensify his pain. “They were laughing, watching my convulsions,” he said.

Among the half-dozen others in the room, Mr. Israilov said, was Supyan Ekiyev, one of Mr. Kadyrov’s guards, who was accused of collaborating in an insurgent attack. He hung by his arms from an exercise machine. His jaw appeared broken, Sharpuddi Israilov said. His hands and legs had been burned by open flames. (The next week, his body was found near Grozny, “heavily distorted by torture,” according to Memorial, a Russian human rights group.)

That night, Mr. Israilov said, Ramzan Kadyrov arrived to torture the prisoners.

By this time, the insurgency had passed its peak. A run of guerrilla operations in 2004 had been followed by terrorist attacks, including the siege at a school in Beslan, that showed the rebels still had sizable forces and considerable resources.

But the terrorist attacks undercut the insurgency’s support and re-energized Russia’s efforts to defeat it, expanding Mr. Kadyrov’s mandate.

Mr. Kadyrov, by then a deputy prime minister, was viewed as Chechnya’s president-in-waiting. He needed only to turn 30, the post’s legally required age. He was 28.

Mr. Kadyrov did not beat the elder Mr. Israilov that night. But watching Chechnya’s most prominent man wander between victims — beating some, shocking others, playing billiards — Mr. Israilov felt disgust. “He just came in to have fun,” Mr. Israilov said.

In Chechnya last year, The Times found another person, unrelated to the Israilovs, who survived detention at the compound at the same time. The former detainee, clearly terrified, corroborated details of the treatment, including the torture of another detainee, and described abductions and the center’s grounds in the same manner as the Israilovs, but did not want to be identified, citing a fear that relatives would be killed.

Sharpuddi Israilov’s allegations are also consistent with those of another Chechen in hiding, who has asked that his identity remain undisclosed. The man, who filed a complaint to the European court in 2007, said he was abducted from a bus in November 2004 and detained for a long period at a base controlled by Mr. Kadyrov, where he was beaten, burned by a gas flame and subjected to electric shocks, according to the European Human Rights Advocacy Center, a London-based organization that helps Russians and Georgians seek justice in Europe. After Sharpuddi Israilov was detained, he and Umar Israilov said, Mr. Kadyrov and another Chechen official called Umar in Poland and demanded his return to Chechnya. They apparently found his Polish number on his father’s phone.

Mr. Kadyrov was enraged, Umar Israilov said, and told him of the capture of his father and other relatives. “I will kill them all,” Mr. Israilov recalled Mr. Kadyrov saying.

“I will not come back,” Mr. Israilov said, and hung up.

Escape to the West

Umar Israilov’s defiance appeared to work. His relatives were not killed. His sister-in-law and his father’s wife were released. (Both have received asylum in Europe.)

His father’s detention, however, dragged on. He was transferred to Gudermes and held until Oct. 4, 2005, more than 10 months.

Mr. Israilov said he was not tortured again but shared space with as many as 100 detainees, mostly fighters’ relatives or government fighters accused of minor crimes. Many were beaten or subjected to shocks.

Among those he saw in custody, he said, was Khamad Umarov, the 72-year-old father of Doku Umarov, then a senior rebel commander and now president of the separatist shadow government.

Khamad Umarov’s kidnapping was reported at the time; separatist Web sites have since reported that he died in custody.

On the day the elder Mr. Israilov was released, he said, he was dropped in front of his home. He was bearded and scarred and had lost about 45 pounds.

In early 2006, according to his complaint to the European Court, a Russian prosecutor asked him to sign a statement saying that he had made up his story of detention to cover for time spent away from home with a mistress.

Mr. Israilov said he threw the paper in the prosecutor’s face.

Then he fled with his wife, Shovda Viskhanova, to Norway for asylum. By that time, Umar Israilov had moved to Austria and received asylum there.

In interviews, both men said that though they been granted the possibility of peaceful lives, they wanted to obtain justice and hold the Russian and Chechen governments accountable. They filed separate complaints to the European Court of Human Rights in late 2006.

The court, established by the European Convention on Human Rights, has become a legal venue of last resort for citizens of countries that have signed the convention, which include Russia. Chechnya, as a republic of Russia, is covered by Russian conventions and laws.

To hide their locations, the Israilovs provided only a post office box in a third Western country. Unbeknownst to them, the court sought more information but could not find them. The case was dropped and expunged from files, although the Israilov family is resubmitting documents to have it reinstated.

In August, the Chechen who said he had been sent to Austria by Mr. Kadyrov found Umar Israilov and asked him to withdraw his complaints or risk being killed and having his family killed. Mr. Israilov refused, he and his lawyer said. The Austrian government released the man and did not protect Mr. Israilov.

In the days since Mr. Israilov’s killing, Austrian police and counterterrorism officers have arrested eight Chechens in the case. All had received or applied for asylum, the prosecutor’s spokesman said. The suspects were still being questioned and the evidence reviewed, he said, and their motives were not yet clear.

Umar Israilov, for his part, had all but predicted his fate.

“A guy from our village works as a commander in the kadyrovtsie,” he said at the end of his final interview with a reporter last year. “He told it to my cousin: that I should be very, very careful, because Ramzan promises a bounty for me.”

In Sofia, Bulgaria, hampered by the gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine, commuters rode in an unheated tram on Thursday. The European Union said gas should flow again soon.

The agreement means that gas supplies could resume soon, perhaps as early as Friday, or more likely over the weekend, if no further hitches arise.

Russia cut off all gas deliveries through Ukraine on Wednesday after the dispute escalated, leaving European countries like Bulgaria shivering during a bitter January cold snap.

Ukraine said it would allow Russian experts to join the European Union mission to monitor gas flow through the country, The Associated Press reported from Kiev.

Valentyn Zemlyansky, spokesman for Ukraine’s state gas company Naftogaz, said members of the European Union mission would tour gas pumping stations together with the Russian experts, the A.P. reported, adding that the European Union monitors were expected to arrive in Kiev on Friday.

Russia has said it would restore supplies of natural gas through Ukraine if its officials were included in a monitoring mission.

The European Union said Thursday that gas supplies to the Continent should start flowing shortly after a deal was completed.

“This deployment should lead to the Russian supplies of gas to E.U. member states’ being restored,” the Czech government, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, said in a statement, The Associated Press reported.

Russia cut off the flow of gas on Tuesday as part of a pricing dispute with Ukraine, creating shortages in many European countries. The impact of the gas cuts was felt most severely in southeastern Europe, where hundreds of thousands of people in Serbia, Bosnia and Bulgaria were without heat.

Russia, which first cut off gas shipments just for Ukraine, on Wednesday cut off all gas exports to Ukraine, including those destined for Europe, saying Ukraine was diverting some gas for its domestic use.

The pricing dispute centers on Russia’s desire to sharply raise the price for the gas it sells to Ukraine, as well as Ukraine’s desire to raise the fees that it charges Gazprom to ship gas to the European Union. Gazprom is seeking to raise the price Ukraine pays for gas to $450 per 1,000 cubic meters from $179.50 last year. Ukraine has reportedly offered a little more than $200 per 1,000 cubic meters. Russia also wants to collect what it says are fines for late payments on previous shipments.

Gazprom halted all shipments to Ukraine for domestic use on Jan. 1, then stopped gas exports for transshipment through Ukraine on Wednesday, saying its western neighbor was taking gas from the pipeline meant for European customers. The cutoff left Ukraine and 17 other countries in Europe facing either no new gas supplies or a sharp reduction in the middle of winter.

In a European parliamentary committee hearing on Thursday, Evgeni Kirilov, a member from Bulgaria, which depends almost completely on Russia for its gas, said he could not understand “how two of the biggest countries in Europe can be so uncivilized and irresponsible.” He added: “We are hostage to this irresponsibility.”

Mr. Putin blamed Ukraine’s leaders for the shutoff and suggested they were unwilling to cut out a middleman company, RosUkrEnergo, owned by a business ally of the Ukrainian president, Viktor A. Yushchenko. Mr. Putin said he suspected some politicians of seeking to use proceeds from gas “as financial resources in future political campaigns.”

Speaking on Russian television on Thursday, Mr. Putin offered to raise the transit fees that Russia pays to ship gas across Ukraine, saying the two countries needed to shift, “as quickly as possible to a market relationship.” In exchange for a market rate for gas, he said, Russia would pay transit fees of $3 to $4 for each 1,000 cubic meters transported 100 kilometers, or 62 miles. Gazprom last year paid Ukraine $1.60 and had said it would pay $1.70 this year.

While there are political overtones to the dispute, most experts attribute it primarily to commercial interests. “The genesis of this is in Russia’s move away from barter agreements with the former Soviet republics toward market prices,” Andrew Neff, an energy analyst at IHS Global Insight in Ankara, Turkey, said. “You can blame either one, but both sides seem to have shot themselves in the foot.”

Several countries are relying on their own limited reserves of gas

The two sides have blamed each other for halting gas flows.

Ukraine’s Naftogaz said Russia’s Gazprom halted supplies at 0744 local time (0544 GMT). Gazprom said Ukraine had closed the last remaining pipeline.

The EU depends on Russia for about a quarter of its total gas supplies, some 80% of which is pumped through Ukraine.

The list of countries that have reported a total halt of Russian supplies via Ukraine includes Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Serbia, and Austria.

Italy said it had received only 10% of its expected supply.

The row comes amid a cold snap across Europe that is likely to push up demand for gas.

Bulgaria says it has sufficient supplies for just a few more days.

Many other countries are now tapping strategic reserves, built up to cope with just such a development, says the BBC’s Europe correspondent Nick Thorpe.

Power stations have been told to switch to fuel oil where possible, while big industrial users have been told to prepare to limit or halt use.

Some 12,000 households in the eastern Bulgarian city of Varna had been left without central heating, authorities said. Nearby Dobrich was also affected.

In many former Soviet bloc countries whole towns and areas rely on a single centralised heating system, so that when that shuts down, every household is affected.

Hungary’s gas transmission company said it had limited the natural gas consumption for industrial users on Wednesday, while Budapest airport was switching from gas to oil heating, Reuters news agency reported.

Hungary expects to use 64m cubic metres of gas on Wednesday, down from 68m cubic metres, the company said.

Venting anger

Russia and Ukraine have been blaming each other for the disruption to Europe’s energy supplies.

Gazprom has accused Ukraine of shutting off the final pipeline carrying gas to Europe, but the Ukrainian gas company has said that would be impossible, since the taps are in Russia.

Correspondents say the differing versions offered by the two countries show how far apart they are, and that the row is rapidly becoming a means for venting anger caused by poor political relations.

Talks between Naftogaz and Gazprom aimed at resolving the crisis are due to resume in Moscow on Thursday – after the Christmas public holiday on Wednesday in Russia and Ukraine.

Gazprom will also discuss the matter with the EU on the same day.

The European Commission has demanded that gas supplies to the EU are immediately restored.

‘Theft increasing’

Russia stopped supplying gas to Ukraine on New Year’s Day in a row about unpaid bills and the failure to agree a new pricing contract.

On Monday, Gazprom decided to cut exports through Ukrainian pipelines by a fifth to compensate for the amount it said Ukraine was siphoning off supplies intended for Europe for its own use.

Gazprom has said Ukraine was stealing 15% of gas delivered across its borders and that theft was “increasing by the hour”.

On Wednesday Gazprom deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev said there was no “physical possibility” of Russia bringing gas to European customers because of the shutdown of pipes going though Ukraine.

He also warned that in cold weather gas needed to flow through the pipes to keep them operational, and that failing this, “the system could not be restarted very quickly”.

Ukraine has denied stealing gas, saying technical problems are disrupting the onward flow of gas to Europe.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said in a letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso that his country had not used “a single cubic metre of Russian gas” to meet its own needs.

The new EU member states in central and eastern Europe are heavily – and in some cases entirely – dependent on Russian gas imports.

However, Germany and Italy together account for nearly half of the Russian gas consumed in the EU.

Gazprom has promised to pump extra supplies through other pipelines – the Yamal from Arctic Russia through Belarus to Germany, and the Blue Stream to Turkey under the Black Sea.

A similar row between Gazprom and Ukraine at the beginning of 2006 led to gas shortages in several EU countries.

Much of the EU's gas from Russia arrives via Ukraine

Russia’s gas giant Gazprom said it turned off the taps at 0700 GMT, when its contract to supply Ukraine ended.

Ukraine insists it has paid off its debts to Gazprom, but Russia contests this. The two countries have also failed to agree on a price for 2009.

The EU urged Russia and Ukraine to resume negotiations and not to let the dispute disrupt supplies to Europe.

A similar row between Gazprom and Ukraine at the beginning of 2006 led to gas shortages in several EU countries.

Pipes across Ukraine carry about a fifth of the EU’s gas needs.

The new holders of the EU presidency, the Czech Republic, urged the parties to “rapidly reach a successful outcome” to their dispute.

“All existing commitments to supply and transit must be honoured,” it added.

Both Russia and Ukraine insist that gas supplies transported via Ukraine to the European Union will continue as normal.

An official at Gazprom’s headquarters in Moscow said: “We have fully cut off supplies to Ukraine as of 10am (0700 GMT) today.”

“Usually we supply 390 million cubic metres per day, of which 300 million is transit gas for Europe. Today supplies are running at 300 million cubic metres. We continue supplying Europe in full,” Reuters quoted him as saying.

Ukraine’s state energy firm Naftogaz confirmed that supplies had dropped off steadily, and said it would start pumping gas from its reserves.

Ukraine says it has built up enough reserves to see it through the next few months.

‘Eager for conflict’

“The debt to Gazprom for gas supplied earlier was not paid. Despite verbal statements from Kiev, Gazprom did not see any money in its account,” said Gazprom’s chief executive Alexei Miller said.

He criticised Ukraine’s stance during the negotiations as “unconstructive”, and said Gazprom had no legal reason to continue supplying gas to Ukraine.

Mr Miller said the contract to supply gas depended on the full settlement of £2bn in gas bills and late-payment fines levied by Gazprom.

He also suggested that Kiev was seeking to provoke a wider dispute, saying he was “forming the impression that there are political forces in Ukraine which are very eager to see a gas conflict between our two countries”.

Naftogaz said it has paid $1.5bn (£1bn) in outstanding bills to RosUkrEnergo – a Switzerland-registered gas trading company which is acting as an intermediary – but not the fines imposed by Gazprom.

Gazprom is the world’s largest gas producer and supplies a quarter of the European Union’s gas needs – and 42% of its imports. Most of that is transported via Ukraine.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin had earlier warned Ukraine not to disrupt the transit of gas to Europe.

He warned of “very severe consequences” for Ukraine in terms of its relations with both Russia and European countries.

Mr Putin said Gazprom had been generous in offering Ukraine a price of $250 per 1,000 cubic metres of gas in 2009, given that the price in Europe was currently more than $500.

He said he understood that Ukraine was in “a difficult economic situation” which was worse than Russia’s, but put the dispute down to a “war of the clans” between the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, and President Viktor Yushchenko.

Berthold Kaufmann and his wife, Dorte Feierabend, with their daughters in their "passive house" in Darmstadt, Germany.

In Berthold Kaufmann’s home, there is, to be fair, one radiator for emergency backup in the living room — but it is not in use. Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann’s new “passive house” and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer.

“You don’t think about temperature — the house just adjusts,” said Mr. Kaufmann, watching his 2-year-old daughter, dressed in a T-shirt, tuck into her sausage in the spacious living room, whose glass doors open to a patio. His new home uses about one-twentieth the heating energy of his parents’ home of roughly the same size, he said.

Architects in many countries, in attempts to meet new energy efficiency standards like the Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design standard in the United States, are designing homes with better insulation and high-efficiency appliances, as well as tapping into alternative sources of power, like solar panels and wind turbines.

The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of 140,000 outside Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle. Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants’ bodies.

And in Germany, passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to build than conventional houses.

Decades ago, attempts at creating sealed solar-heated homes failed, because of stagnant air and mold. But new passive houses use an ingenious central ventilation system. The warm air going out passes side by side with clean, cold air coming in, exchanging heat with 90 percent efficiency.

“The myth before was that to be warm you had to have heating. Our goal is to create a warm house without energy demand,” said Wolfgang Hasper, an engineer at the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt. “This is not about wearing thick pullovers, turning the thermostat down and putting up with drafts. It’s about being comfortable with less energy input, and we do this by recycling heating.”

There are now an estimated 15,000 passive houses around the world, the vast majority built in the past few years in German-speaking countries or Scandinavia.

The first passive home was built here in 1991 by Wolfgang Feist, a local physicist, but diffusion of the idea was slowed by language. The courses and literature were mostly in German, and even now the components are mass-produced only in this part of the world.

The industry is thriving in Germany, however — for example, schools in Frankfurt are built with the technique.

Moreover, its popularity is spreading. The European Commission is promoting passive-house building, and the European Parliament has proposed that new buildings meet passive-house standards by 2011.

The United States Army, long a presence in this part of Germany, is considering passive-house barracks.

“Awareness is skyrocketing; it’s hard for us to keep up with requests,” Mr. Hasper said.

Nabih Tahan, a California architect who worked in Austria for 11 years, is completing one of the first passive houses in the United States for his family in Berkeley. He heads a group of 70 Bay Area architects and engineers working to encourage wider acceptance of the standards. “This is a recipe for energy that makes sense to people,” Mr. Tahan said. “Why not reuse this heat you get for free?”

Ironically, however, when California inspectors were examining the Berkeley home to determine whether it met “green” building codes (it did), he could not get credit for the heat exchanger, a device that is still uncommon in the United States. “When you think about passive-house standards, you start looking at buildings in a different way,” he said.  Buildings that are certified hermetically sealed may sound suffocating. (To meet the standard, a building must pass a “blow test” showing that it loses minimal air under pressure.) In fact, passive houses have plenty of windows — though far more face south than north — and all can be opened.

Inside, a passive home does have a slightly different gestalt from conventional houses, just as an electric car drives differently from its gas-using cousin. There is a kind of spaceship-like uniformity of air and temperature. The air from outside all goes through HEPA filters before entering the rooms. The cement floor of the basement isn’t cold. The walls and the air are basically the same temperature.

Look closer and there are technical differences: When the windows are swung open, you see their layers of glass and gas, as well as the elaborate seals around the edges. A small, grated duct near the ceiling in the living room brings in clean air. In the basement there is no furnace, but instead what looks like a giant Styrofoam cooler, containing the heat exchanger.

Passive houses need no human tinkering, but most architects put in a switch with three settings, which can be turned down for vacations, or up to circulate air for a party (though you can also just open the windows). “We’ve found it’s very important to people that they feel they can influence the system,” Mr. Hasper said.

The houses may be too radical for those who treasure an experience like drinking hot chocolate in a cold kitchen. But not for others. “I grew up in a great old house that was always 10 degrees too cold, so I knew I wanted to make something different,” said Georg W. Zielke, who built his first passive house here, for his family, in 2003 and now designs no other kinds of buildings.

In Germany the added construction costs of passive houses are modest and, because of their growing popularity and an ever larger array of attractive off-the-shelf components, are shrinking.

But the sophisticated windows and heat-exchange ventilation systems needed to make passive houses work properly are not readily available in the United States. So the construction of passive houses in the United States, at least initially, is likely to entail a higher price differential.

Moreover, the kinds of home construction popular in the United States are more difficult to adapt to the standard: residential buildings tend not to have built-in ventilation systems of any kind, and sliding windows are hard to seal.

Dr. Feist’s original passive house — a boxy white building with four apartments — looks like the science project that it was intended to be. But new passive houses come in many shapes and styles. The Passivhaus Institut, which he founded a decade ago, continues to conduct research, teaches architects, and tests homes to make sure they meet standards. It now has affiliates in Britain and the United States.

Still, there are challenges to broader adoption even in Europe.

Because a successful passive house requires the interplay of the building, the sun and the climate, architects need to be careful about site selection. Passive-house heating might not work in a shady valley in Switzerland, or on an urban street with no south-facing wall. Researchers are looking into whether the concept will work in warmer climates — where a heat exchanger could be used in reverse, to keep cool air in and warm air out.

And those who want passive-house mansions may be disappointed. Compact shapes are simpler to seal, while sprawling homes are difficult to insulate and heat.

Most passive houses allow about 500 square feet per person, a comfortable though not expansive living space. Mr. Hasper said people who wanted thousands of square feet per person should look for another design.

“Anyone who feels they need that much space to live,” he said, “well, that’s a different discussion.”

The ambassador, Dmitry O. Rogozin, said the lunch, at an Italian restaurant near NATO’s suburban headquarters outside Brussels, was a step toward more normal relations after the brief Georgian-Russian war in August.

“The most difficult thing is to make the first step,” he told reporters. “We are at the beginning of the difficult route to restore trust.”

In mid-January, there will be “an informal NATO-Russia Council meeting at the level of ambassadors,” Mr. Rogozin said.

The NATO secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, made no direct comments, but a spokeswoman, Carmen Romero, said the two men had “agreed to look at ways to restart the engagement.” She said the two sides hoped to hold an informal meeting of the council at the ambassadorial level next month.

NATO cut off formal ties with Moscow in the aftermath of the August war and said there would be no “business as usual” until Russia agreed to pull its troops back to their prewar positions and cancel its recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which are parts of Georgia.

But the beginnings of the war remain disputed, with many NATO allies believing that the Georgian leadership either began the war or fell headfirst into a Russian trap, giving Moscow a pretext to invade. Most Western European countries, dependent on Russia for oil and especially natural gas, have been eager to restart relations with Moscow despite its continued occupation of the two secessionist regions, and they overcame hesitation from the Bush administration and some Eastern European countries, which wanted Moscow to pay a stiffer price.

Still, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made her last visit to a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting on Dec. 2, she agreed that the United States would not object to a gradual, phased re-engagement between NATO and Russia. “The idea of working through a kind of informal contact, with the NATO-Russia Council, is not a problem for us,” Ms. Rice said then. Mr. de Hoop Scheffer was to initiate the informal contacts with Mr. Rogozin.

In an interview the next day with The New York Times, Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said, “Russia is such an important factor in geopolitical terms that there is no alternative for NATO than to engage Russia.”

What mattered in the conversation with Russia, Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said then, was to try to understand “what was behind Georgia” and the short war, and whether it meant a lasting change in Russia’s attitude toward international law, sovereign borders and the “disproportionate” use of force.

He said he would report back to NATO foreign ministers, probably in March, on whether to deepen contacts with Russia still further.

The softer American position on contacts with Russia was seen as a trade-off with Germany, which agreed to defer a decision on the precise mechanism for future NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine — effectively, to an Obama administration.

In Moscow on Friday, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov said Russia had conditions, too. “Now, when our NATO colleagues talk about restoring relations,” he said, “we will insist that the restoration of ties starts with the discussion of the causes of the Caucasus crisis which our NATO partners dodged in August.”

The United States ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker, said on Friday, “We signaled our unhappiness with Russia using military force to invade Georgia and change borders by force of arms, yet we also signaled a desire for a cooperative relationship with Russia.”

The European Union also has renewed dialogue with Moscow.

The Red Army Faction, a far-left group that was also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, carried out a series of assassinations of leading Germans during the late 1970s and early 1980s, killing 34 people. It disbanded in 1998, several years after renouncing violence. It subscribed to a Marxist-Leninist ideology and sought to overthrow the capitalist West German government and to fight perceived American imperialism.

A German court announced the pending release of Mr. Klar, 55, last month. He had received a life sentence for killing three prominent West Germans and their bodyguards and trying to kill a United States Army general. He was released a few weeks earlier than planned after the authorities in Stuttgart said he no longer posed a threat. He will remain on parole for five years.

Two years ago, Mr. Klar asked President Horst Köhler to grant him a pardon and early release, but the request was turned down. Mr. Klar, who at the time of his arrest in 1982 was considered the country’s most-wanted terrorist fugitive, was sentenced for, among other crimes, participating in the kidnapping and murder of Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the head of the German employers’ federation; the assassination of Siegfried Buback, a federal prosecutor, as he rode in his chauffeured car; and the killing of Jürgen Ponto, chairman of Dresdner Bank, in his home.

With Mr. Klar’s release, Birgit Hogefeld is the last member of the Red Army Faction still behind bars. A fellow gang member, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, was released last year after serving 24 years in prison for murders in the 1970s. Eva Haule, who was convicted of participating in the murder of an American soldier in 1985 and the bombing of the Rhein-Main Air Base on the outskirts of Frankfurt when it was the main base for United States forces in Europe, was also released last year, after 21 years in prison.

In an effort to crack down on the movement in the 1970s and 1980s, the authorities at first introduced emergency legislation and curbed civil liberties.

Jailed terrorism suspects were denied access to their lawyers, and at one stage armored personnel carriers patrolled Bonn, the seat of the West German government. Prison conditions for Red Army Faction members were criticized by some liberal politicians, who started questioning why West Germany’s postwar generation had acted so violently against the state, and slowly the tough measures were reversed.

Mr. Klar was held in solitary confinement for seven years. Several terrorists were said to have committed suicide in prison, giving rise to speculation that they might have been murdered by state commandos.

High school students protest in front of their school in the western Athens suburb of Peristeri.

ATHENS, Greece — Thousands of youths demonstrated in central Athens Friday as anger flared in the Greek capital following the shooting of another teenager.

A group of youths targeted the French Institute, a language and cultural institute, and police scrambled to the scene to contain the incident.

The situation began heating up during a protest rally Thursday that followed the bizarre shooting of a high school student in an Athens suburb earlier this week.

The 17-year-old was hit in the hand by an unknown assailant as he was talking to a group of schoolmates in the western suburb of Peristeri. Initial police reports showed the student — the son of a leading trade unionist — was hit with a .38-caliber handgun.

Police said no officers were patrolling the region at the time of the incident.

The mysterious shooting has enflamed widespread student anger over the fatal police shooting of a 15-year-old boy December 6, which sparked Greece’s worst riots in decades.

Students rallied Friday in response to the shooting of the 17-year-old. One of the rallies was planned for central Athens; the other in the suburb where the student was shot.

Later in the day, scores of artists are scheduled to gather in central Athens to stage a protest concert in response to the initial shooting of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos.

Daily protests since the December 6 shooting, including riots, have thrown Greece into turmoil and have become a simmering anger about the conservative government’s handling of the economy, education, and jobs.

A string of labor unions called on workers to march on Parliament Friday to protest the voting of the 2009 state budget, which calls for additional belt-tightening measures in response to the global financial crisis.

Student unions were also gathering to across the country to determine their course of action for the next few weeks.

At least 800 high schools and 200 universities remain shut as thousands of youths have seized the grounds and campuses in protest.

The unrest is threatening the government’s hold on power, with some opposition groups calling for fresh elections. Stores and international businesses have been attacked, and at least 280 people have been detained by police. Of that total, 176 were arrested, 130 of them for looting.

Of the two officers involved in the death of the 15-year-old, one is charged with premeditated manslaughter and the other with acting as an accomplice.

Critics fear the climate deal may have been undermined by compromises

European Union leaders have reached a deal on a package of measures to fight global warming.

The plan, agreed at a Brussels summit, sets out how 27 member-countries will cut carbon emissions by 20% by 2020.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the summit chairman, said something “quite historic” had happened in Brussels.

But critics pointed to concessions made to some nations, saying they would lessen the long-term impact of the package.

Scientists say carbon dioxide emissions need to be cut by 25-40% by 2020 for there to be a reasonable chance of avoiding dangerous climate change.

In other developments:

The measures, which also require approval by the European Parliament to become law, commit the EU to cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 20% by 2020, compared to 1990 levels.

It must also raise renewable sources to 20% of total energy use.

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called the plans “the most ambitious proposals anywhere in the world”.

“Europe has today passed its credibility test. We mean business when we talk about climate,” he said, appealing to US President-elect Barack Obama to follow Europe’s lead.

But critics said the package – which includes concessions to some Eastern European countries – did not go far enough.

“This is a flagship EU policy with no captain, a mutinous crew and several gaping holes in it,” said Sanjeev Kumar of WWF.

‘Watering down’

At the same time, a UN climate conference has been taking place in Poznan, Poland, where former US presidential candidate John Kerry said the United States was set to lead the world towards a new climate deal.

Mr Kerry, who is representing Mr Obama, said the aim of agreeing a deal by next year had to remain on track.

Environmental groups at the Poznan conference have reacted angrily to what they see as unacceptable watering down in draft final EU texts.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso is joining them, ahead of an EU summit in Brussels this week.

They will later meet business leaders from across Europe afterwards to discuss ways to ease problems.

And they are expected to discuss ways that moving to a low-carbon economy could generate more jobs.

Among those taking part in the Downing Street meeting are representatives of Vodafone, Tesco, British Telecom, the National Grid, Corus, Prudential and Diageo.

French package

In November the European Commission unveiled an economic recovery plan worth 200bn euros (£170bn) – including at least 5bn euros to help the car industry develop green technologies.

Last week France became the latest of the biggest European economies to unveil a fiscal stimulus package.

It plans to spend 26bn euro (£23bn) plan to boost its economy – including a loan for car manufacturers and 5bn euro public sector investments.

Britain has already unveiled a £20bn (23.6bn euros) plan – which includes a cut in VAT, but the prime minister’s spokesman has indicated more needed to be done across Europe.

It is expected that the meeting with business leaders will discuss ways to ease pressure on firms – for example by reducing red tape to help keep costs down.