WASHINGTON, Oct 31 (Reuters) - The United States is looking at Chechen groups to see if they deserve designation and sanctions as "foreign terrorist organizations," a senior State Department official said on Thursday.
If designated, the groups would go on the State Department's list of extremist organizations, which now includes 35 groups. It is illegal to provide material support to the groups; U.S. banks must freeze their assets and members can be denied visas.
The senior official, who asked not to be named, said the Chechen groups had been under review for some time, implying that the process started before Chechen guerrillas held hundreds of people hostage in a Moscow theater last week.
Russia has asked the United States to include the unnamed groups as an expression of U.S. solidarity with Russia in a joint "international war on terrorism."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, asked about the request on Thursday, said: "We're always looking at groups that might be included, that might be listed, but I don't have any new decisions at this point one way or the other."
"The process of determining this sort of legal determination to put a group on a list involves a collection of a lot of information and the careful analysis of the group and its record," the spokesman added.
The State Department's latest annual "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report, released in May, does not mention any Chechen groups by name.
But it says that one "rebel faction," including both Chechen and Arab fighters, "is connected to international Islamic terrorists and has used terrorist methods."
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