The parliamentary commission investigating the Beslan hostage-taking raid in the autumn of 2004, said the report will be finalized later this year

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The parliamentary commission investigating the Beslan hostage-taking raid in the autumn of 2004, said the report will be finalized later this year. "We wish to finish the work on the document this year, or it may continue indefinitely," head of the commission, deputy speaker of the Federation Council upper house of parliament Alexander Torshin told reporters on Wednesday. He noted changes in witnesses' testimony in the course of work, and the appearance of new facts. The report should specifically state when updates or changes were introduced, Torshin said. The senator reminded that United States keeps announcing new facts concerning the terrorist attacks in September, 2001. "There'll be people anyway who'd say things in Beslan didn't happen that way," he said. Earlier, Torshin said in an interview with Itar-Tass that "the report was almost ready," and that the immediate task was to "polish the text." The coordination of each page of the report with each person of the 19-member commission is a difficult job, as it calls for comparing all positions. At present, the coordination of wording is underway, according to the senator. Initially, the commission will release an Internet version of the document, and make it public at a joint hearing of Duma lawmakers and senators. More than 700 people are expected to attend the hearing, so a large conference hall is needed to accommodate all. The report will name the causes of that tragic event and the conclusions drawn by the commission. It is unlikely that the whole report will be read because it contains several hundred pages, Torshin said. "We'll name the most acute issues which number about ten," the senator noted adding that these might include the updated information about the number of hostages, the time when the tank began to shoot, and on whether or not the militants had cached weapons. The parliamentary commission will not time the publication of the report with the results of the parallel investigation independently conducted by North Ossetian legislators. "Each has his work to do, but the commissions are sharing their information," Torshin said.

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