A senior Russian lawmaker said Tuesday that there is firm evidence showing that radical Islamic organizations, including Al-Qaida, are financing Chechen militants,Itar-Tass news agency reported. Anatoly Kulikov, deputy chairman of the security committee of the State Duma, the lower house of Russian parliament, also said many terrorists operating in Russia's breakaway republic of Chechnya come from the Middle East, Europe and North America. However, Western countries still refrain from branding Chechen terrorism as a branch of international terrorist networks, Kulikov said, complaining that "none of our partners in the international anti-terrorist coalition have extradited to Russia the criminals who have stained their hands with the blood of hundreds of innocent people."He urged the West to discard the erroneous belief that regional and international terrorists act on parallel agendas, saying "they are just elements of a single chain, and the situation in Chechnya proves it." "Chechnya has turned into a stumbling block on the way to closer cooperation between Russia and the West," Kulikov said, adding that the West's position on the Chechen issue exerts a crucial impact on Russia's role in the international anti-terrorist coalition and Russian relations with the West.