MOSCOW, 17 January 2004 — A top official told Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday that all Chechen refugee camps would be shut down by March 1, less than two weeks before the president who launched the war in the southern republic faces reelection.
The camps, in the Ingushetia republic that borders Chechnya, are a constant embarrassment to the Kremlin, which insists that refugees can safely return home, and authorities have unsuccessfully tried to close them down for at least four months.
The tent camps were originally due to be shut down by Oct. 1, then Jan. 1, but many refugees have refused to leave, afraid to return to a shattered republic where open warfare has turned into a guerrilla conflict that continues to claim lives nearly daily.
Russia’s minister in charge of Chechnya Stanislav Ilyasov told Putin at a Kremlin meeting yesterday that the camps would be closed by March 1, which would empty out the camps before the March 14 presidential election that Putin is expected to easily win.
Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin said the March 1 deadline “is not a bluff but an objective that must be carried out,” as quoted on the Itar-Tass news agency.
But Ingush authorities denied that there was any deadline for the closure of the camps.
“The return of refugees to Chechnya from Ingushetia will be an exclusively voluntary process, and the republic’s authorities will not set any deadline,” the Ingush president’s spokesman told Interfax.
Ilyasov also accused non-government organizations working at the camps, which include the United Nations, of “creating a disturbance and hindering the (closing) process,” as quoted by Interfax.
Putin retorted: “You only think they are creating a hindrance. Maybe they are creating less than ideal working conditions for you, but they care about the people who live there. You have to take that into account.”
