Basayev "has committed, or poses a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of US nationals or the national security, foreign policy or economy of the US," Secretary of State Colin Powell said.
The State Department announced the blacklisting of Basayev under various executive orders signed by President George W Bush in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the Federal Register.
In a separate but related notice, the US Treasury named Basayev a "specially designated global terrorist" along with another rebel leader, Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, in the the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya.
Yandarbiev, who signed a peace accord with former Russian president Boris Yeltsin in 1996, appears to have kept a low profile since then but Basayev has emerged as the main separatist warlord in the mainly Muslim republic.
Basayev has taken responsibility for a series of suicide attacks in May that killed nearly 100 people, as well as the deadly October 2002 hostage-taking at a Moscow theater.
US officials also accuse Basayev of having received millions of dollars from Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network.
In late February, Powell similarly designated three Chechen rebel groups affiliated with Basayev, accusing them of ties to al-Qaeda and adding them to the US list of banned terrorist organisations.
The three groups affected by that move were the Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs, the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment and the Islamic International Brigade.
All were implicated in the Moscow theater hostage-taking incident, in which 129 people died, and also have ties with bin Laden, al-Qaeda and Afghanistan's former ruling Taliban militia dating back to the mid-to-late 1990s, the State Department said at the time. – Sapa-AFP.
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