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| Mr Chubais oversaw Russia's privatisation
programme |
The head of Russia's state-controlled electricity monopoly, Anatoly
Chubais, has survived an assassination attempt.
Police said gunmen opened fire on his motorcade and also detonated an
explosive device in the Moscow ambush.
Mr Chubais, who oversaw Russia's privatisation programme in the 1990s,
was unhurt and continued to work after the attack, his spokesman said.
A retired army explosives expert has been arrested
after detectives linked his car to the ambush
, reports say.
The former deputy prime minister played a key role in the much
criticised sale of Russia's natural resources to a select group of Russian
businessmen - the so-called oligarchs.
Mr Chubais, 49, also ran former President Boris Yeltsin's successful
re-election campaign in 1996, before becoming the chief of Unified Energy
System in 1998.
He has also continued to play an active role in Russia's politics as
one of the leaders of an influential liberal party - the Union of Right
Forces (SPS).
Mr Chubais' two-car motorcade was attacked at about 0930
local time shortly after he left his country home outside Moscow, police
said.
"The explosive device went off between the two cars," a police
spokesman said.
Police said that two unidentified gunmen clad in combat fatigues then
sprayed the armoured cars with automatic fire.
Mr Chubais' BMW immediately sped off the scene, while bodyguards in the
second car returned fire, forcing the attackers to flee, police and
witnesses said.
No-one was hurt in the attack, police said.
Russian news agencies reported that police
arrested the retired army colonel, who has a dacha
in the same village as Mr Chubais, after tracing
a car they suspected was used as a getaway.
Authorities searched his dacha as well as his son's Moscow apartment.
Russia's leading liberal politician Irina Khakamada said the attack was
most likely linked to the reform of the power grid monopoly.
"It must have been linked to difficult processes of redistribution of
UES assets," Ms Khakamada told Russia's Ekho Moskvy radio station.
But Boris Nemtsov, on the SPS's leaders, said that it was "clear to me
the attempt on his life had political roots".
Mr Chubais himself appeared to acknowledge both possibilities.
"I understand quite clearly, who could have organised today's
assassination," he said in a statement, without giving any names.
"The main thing I can say today is that everything I have done -
regarding both the reform of the country's energy sector and the
unification of democratic forces - I will continue to do with redoubled
energy," the statement said.
Mr Chubais has in the past acknowledged that he has no shortage of
enemies who have threatened to assassinate him.
"They've promised to drag me by my feet to the walls of the Kremlin, to
draw and quarter me and then behead me on Red Square, to disfigure me with
acid and many other things," he told Russia's Izvestia newspaper in 2001.
(Agencies) | 
Updated: 2005-03-18 09:47