Chechen Leader Says Finding Missing People Will Be His Priority

Excerpt from report by Russian news agency Interfax-AVN website

Groznyy, 1 March: Finding missing people will be a priority for the Chechen authorities, the acting president of the republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, has said in a statement.

Due to “Ramzan Kadyrov being very busy” the document was read by the president’s and the government’s chief of staff, Abdul Kakhir Izrayilov, at an international human rights conference in Groznyy on Thursday [1 March].

“There are, indeed, certain problems in the republic relating to ensuring human rights and freedoms. However, throughout recent years, the republic’s leadership, with the central authorities’ full support, has been endeavouring to establish the supremacy of law on Chechen territory,” the statement said.

“Hostage-taking remains one of most pressing issues. There are also problems relating to the violation of property and social rights of most vulnerable people,” Ramzan Kadyrov stressed.

“It is necessary to look at all possible ways of resolving the pressing human rights issues, above all the issue of missing people. Most of them disappeared in 1999-20001,” he said.

“The Chechen leadership will do everything in its power to find these people. I assure both the international community and the leadership of the country that we shall not ignore a single incident of disappearance,” Ramzan Kadyrov said.

“This is a holy duty of the republic’s leadership,” he said.

“We plan to finally resolve the issue of displaced persons this year,” Ramzan Kadyrov also said.

“Russian and international human rights organizations have been persistently talking about the tragedy of these people. Most of them have already received new accommodation. The others will be provided with housing this year,” he said.

Ramzan Kadyrov said that “he intends to closely cooperate with international and Russian human rights organizations and to ensure openness in relations with these organizations”.

“Of course there are differences. At times human rights activists reject everything that is being done in Chechnya. Some of your colleagues refused to come here because they do not want to talk to Ramzan Kadyrov. They place personal ambition above the willingness and opportunities to protect the rights of their compatriots,” the statement said. [Passage omitted: amnesty a success]

He [Kadyrov] thanked the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammerberg for visiting Chechnya and for providing advice, which, Kadyrov thinks, will help improve the operation of human rights organizations in Chechnya and ensure human rights in the republic.

(c) 2007 BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.