From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 2/8/2006 11:34 AM February 8, 2006 11:26 AM Danish aid groups suspend Chechnya operations after ban announced over prophet drawings
MOSCOW (AP) - An aid group that provides food to tens of thousands of people in war-ravaged Chechnya suspended its operations on Tuesday after Chechen officials banned all Danish organizations because of the publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons.
The Danish Refugee Council's country director for Russia, Per Ilsaas, said the group had temporarily halted operations in the southern Russian region for security reasons but hoped it would be able to resume its work soon.
"We hope we will be able to enter a dialogue to see if there is a way forward," Ilsaas told The Associated Press.
Ramzan Kadyrov, a widely feared strongman who is the No. 2 figure in Chechnya's Kremlin-backed administration, said Monday that Danish organizations would no longer be allowed in mostly Muslim Chechnya because of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that were published in Denmark and have sparked a wave of anger across the Islamic world.
Chechen Deputy Prime Minister Khalid Vaikhanov said he sent a letter confirming the ban to the U.N. refugee agency's Russia office.
"We highly appreciate the contribution made by the Danish Refugee Council humanitarian organization, but the publication of the caricatures has provoked a negative response across the entire Muslim world and the Chechen republic," the Interfax news agency quoted Vaikhanov as saying.
But Ilsaas said the Danish Refugee Council had received no official notification from Chechen or federal authorities, raising the question about whether Kadyrov had the authority to impose the ban.
"We are awaiting clarification from the relevant authorities," he said.
President Vladimir Putin's administration has made no comment about Kadyrov's announcement, but it came amid Kremlin moves to restrict non-governmental organizations in Russia.
State Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov said that "such statements should first be cleared with official bodies," Interfax reported. It also quoted Pavel Krasheninnikov, the chairman of a Duma legislative committee, as saying that Kadyrov's statement was "purely emotional" and "not in accordance with Russian laws."
Ilsaas said the council is the largest non-governmental humanitarian aid organization operating in Russia's restive North Caucasus region. It distributes food to some 250,000 people in the area, most of them in Chechnya, and operates other programs for refugees who have returned to Chechnya after fleeing years of war or remain in nearby areas.
The council has no permanent staff in Chechnya, which has been plagued by devastating conflict pitting Russian forces against separatist rebels for most of the past 12 years, but it has seven international and 400 local staffers elsewhere in the North Caucasus, with an office in neighboring Ingushetia.
The Danish Refugee Council has had uneasy relations with the Russian government in the past, with allegations aired in the Russian media that some of its aid ended up in rebels' hands.
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Associated Press writer Artur Magomadov in Grozny, Russia, contributed to this report.
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