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U.N. Suspends Work In Chechnya After Kidnapping Of U.S. Aid Worker
MOSCOW (News Agencies) - The United Nations and non-governmental organizations announced Thursday they had suspended humanitarian operations in war-torn Chechnya after the kidnapping of a U.S. aid worker in the Russian republic.
"For the time being we have suspended our humanitarian program in Chechnya," Toby Lanzer, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Moscow, said.
"The U.N. is currently reviewing the situation. We do have a skeletal staff in the region, and we will for the time being continue working in Ingushetia, North Ossetia and other areas of the North Caucasus," he added.
Kenny Gluck, regional mission chief for the Nobel Peace Prize-winning medical aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, Doctors Without Borders), was snatched by unidentified gunmen Tuesday south of the capital Grozny.
MSF announced Wednesday that it had suspended its activities in Chechnya following the abduction, which happened as a four-car convoy was delivering humanitarian supplies in Chechnya.
The French non-governmental organization, Action Contre La Faim (Action Against Hunger), whose U.S. head of mission Jonathan Littell was in the same convoy as Gluck but managed to escape, followed suit Thursday.
"Following this tragic incident, Action Contre la Faim has decided to temporarily suspend its activities on the territory of the Chechen republic," the charity said in a statement from Paris.
The 38-year-old American is being held in a base in the mountainous south of the secessionist territory, according to the Russian authorities in Chechnya cited by ITAR-TASS.
But Chechnya's separatist president Aslan Maskhadov has denied that Chechen forces fighting Russian troops had anything to do with the abduction.
Maskhadov Thursday gave instructions to his special forces to find Gluck, a spokesman for the leader said by telephone in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia.
Meanwhile, all interior ministry posts in the republic had been placed on alert as Russian security forces scoured Chechnya for the aid worker, ITAR-TASS news agency reported.
Lanzer said that over the past five months the United Nations had built up "a fairly comprehensive program" of food aid in parts of Chechnya including the republic's ruined capital Grozny.
In December alone, 110,000 people received food aid from the U.N. World Food Program, working in collaboration with non-governmental organizations.
Expatriate U.N. staff regularly traveled into the conflict-racked territory for the day to deliver aid, the official said.
The suspension of the U.N. program came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin's permanent envoy to Chechnya warned of "a humanitarian catastrophe" in the republic caused by the lack of necessary funding from Moscow.
More than 200,000 people had been forced to quit their homes and settle in other parts of war-torn Chechnya, while between 280,000 and 320,000 had taken refuge in neighboring republics, Shamil Beno said.
"The situation is made worse by the fact that the republic has hardly received any funds" from Moscow in recent months, he added.
Russian troops and tanks poured into Chechnya on October 1, 1999, to crack down on Chechen separatists, but Moscow has been unable to wipe out their activity in the Caucasus republic since retaking the capital Grozny last February.
Kidnappings of journalists, aid workers and other foreigners has been widespread in the breakaway Russian province since the outbreak of the first, 1994-1996 Chechen war.
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