Russia's lower house of parliament approved amendments to an anti-terrorism law on Wednesday that would allow President Vladimir Putin to use forces abroad to ward off a terrorist threat.

The bill, passed unanimously in the State Duma in its third and final reading, gives the president the power to make decisions to use the armed forces and special forces abroad to counter terrorist threats against Russia or its citizens.

The president "will have to notify the Federation Council (upper house of parliament) but may omit information about the unit size, place and period of the possible operation," State Duma Security Committee Chairman Vladimir Vasilyev was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying earlier.

These amendments "fully comply with the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism," Vasilyev said.

Last Wednesday Putin ordered Russian special services to take all measures to "locate and destroy" those responsible for the deaths of four Russian diplomats in Iraq.
 
"Russia will be grateful to all of our friends for any information about the criminals who killed our citizens in Iraq," Putin said here during a meeting with visiting Saudi Arabian Prince Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, according to the Kremlin.

Director of the Federal Security Service Nikolai Patrushev said he had received instructions from the president to track down the terrorists responsible for the killings.

Russian special forces will make every effort to bring the murderers to justice, Patrushev told Moscow press.

The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed the deaths of the four diplomats, kidnapped on June 3 in Baghdad, on June 26, a day after the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization grouping several insurgent groups in Iraq including the al-Qaida terror network, said in an Internet statement that it had carried out the killings.

(Xinhua News Agency July 6, 2006)