The New York Times

Friday, June 23, 2000

Council of Europe Team Visits Chechnya

By Reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A delegation from the Council of Europe arrived in Chechnya Friday to join an official Russian human rights monitoring team in the war-stricken separatist region.

Secretary-General Walter Schwimmer accompanied three experts from the Council who were due to set up an office in a village northwest of the ruined capital Grozny. They will join officials working for Russia's Chechnya rights envoy, Vladimir Kalamanov.

The Council of Europe, along with many other human rights bodies and governments, has repeatedly criticized Russia's nine-month military campaign against Chechen separatists as excessively brutal.

``We want to make our contribution to improving the situation in Chechnya,'' Interfax news agency quoted Schwimmer as saying shortly before arriving in Chechnya. Some members of his team plan to stay in the region for six months.

The Council snubbed Moscow last April when its parliamentary assembly recommended Russia's suspension from the 41-member club of democracies over Chechnya. Member state foreign ministers later overruled the suspension.

Russia says it controls all of Chechnya except for some areas in the southern mountains which are near the Georgian border. But a recent spate of surprise attacks in and near Grozny have caused Russia to tighten security.

The Kremlin's Chechnya spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, was quoted by Interfax as saying Georgia had lost control of a gorge on its side of the border and 800 rebels were based there.

``The situation in the gorge frequently gets out of the control (of Georgian authorities),'' he said, adding that Georgian authorities had been informed of Moscow's concern.

Georgia denied there were any rebels on its territory.

``We've said this repeatedly. We categorically rule out the possibility of there being armed bands in the Pankisky gorge who intend to cross into Chechnya,'' presidential spokesman Kakha Imnadze told Reuters in Tbilisi.

He said there were a large number of Chechen refugees in the gorge but the border was tightly patrolled, making it practically impossible for armed men to slip through.

Rebels fired at Russian positions across Chechnya and Russian airplanes and attack helicopters struck at guerrilla strongholds, Interfax said, quoting the Russian military.