UN bars Chechnya to aid workers

The United Nations has told the Kremlin not to expect any increase in its or other aid agency staff in Chechnya until a kidnapped Dutch aid worker has been released.

The war-torn republic is heavily dependent on foreign aid for food, shelter, and medicine, and as more refugees return to its bombed towns and villages the need for help will increase.

At the end of a visit to Grozny, Jan Egeland, the UN's head of humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, told the Guardian: "It'll be very hard for us to argue we should have a higher international presence in Chechnya until Arjan Erkel is released.

"We all rally round this case. It is very important."

His line runs counter to the plea by the Russian minister for Chechen affairs, Stanislav Ilyasov, at a meeting of UN and NGO staff in Moscow on Monday. Asking aid workers to return to Grozny as soon as possible, he offered them military protection in a guarded compound.

Mr Erkel, a 33-year-old Dutch national, was working for the charity MИdecins sans FrontiХres in the northern Caucasus when he was abducted by three armed men in Dagestan in August 2002.

Two agents of the Federal Security Bureau, the successor to the KGB, were following him at the time. They did not intervene, and let the kidnappers get away.

Although photographs, two handwritten letters and, most recently, a video have emerged to prove that he is still alive, MSF says no ransom has been demanded and it is not known what those who hold him want.

About 67,000 Chechen refugees are in Ingushetia, a province west of Chechnya, living in miserable conditions. A total of 5,700 of them in tents.

The Russian and Ingush authorities have been gradually closing the camps although under international law the forced repatriation of refugees and internally displaced people is forbidden.

"They should keep the camps open until winter is over and then only phase them out when people have alternative shelter or have gone home," said Mr Egeland.