Chechnya's neighbours facing turmoil

Russia's volatile Chechnya region is making progress on human rights but next-door Dagestan and Ingushetia may plunge into violence, a senior European human rights official said yesterday.

Money is being spent on new schools and hospitals, and many refugees are returning to Chechnya, Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner, said after visiting the North Caucasus earlier this week. He had met President Vladimir Putin earlier yesterday, and although there had been no new reports of torture in Chechen jails for over a year and kidnappings were less common, he told the Russian leader that some issues remained.

"This (meeting) was focused on Chechnya and the missing persons there," Mr Hammarberg told a news conference. There were about 3,000 people missing in Chechnya, he said, while about 50 mass graves had been unearthed there.

"We know that quite a number of those (missing) were killed and they probably are those who are found in those graves... What I told President Putin was that... it will be difficult to go into the future if this problem is left unresolved."

Russia fought two wars from 1994 to put down Chechen efforts to win independence and the Muslim region was reduced to ruins.

President Ramzan Kadyrov, the 31-year-old son of a murdered Chechen leader and a former rebel himself, now controls Chechnya backed by his own security forces and Russian troops.

Rights groups have accused Mr Kadyrov's loyalists of illegal arrests and torture in local jails. He has denied the charges. Mr Hammarberg said many security officials had been replaced over the past year and interrogation methods had improved.

"There is a need to go back to those (previous) sentences and analyse them, so that no one is kept in prison because of a confession... that was a product of torture."

But while Chechnya is improving, Islamic insurgents have stepped up attacks on local governments in next-door Dagestan and Ingushetia, Mr Hammarberg said.

"Sometimes security forces use more violence than they should and they are also careless when it comes to protecting civilians, which creates bitterness which makes it easier for insurgents to recruit new supporters," he said.