Robinson may meet Putin after her visit to Chechnya

The UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, is due to travel to the Northern Caucasus region today as part of her four-day visit to the Russian Federation. Mrs Robinson met Russia's human rights commissioner, Mr Oleg Mironov, in Moscow yesterday and also held meetings with representatives of non-governmental organisations with an interest in human rights.

On her arrival she told reporters she wanted to awaken the conscience of the president-elect, Mr Vladimir Putin, to human rights abuses in Chechnya. Although Mrs Robinson is not officially scheduled to meet Mr Putin, the official news agency ITAR-TASS reported that such a meeting may now take place.

She will spend today in Ingushetia meeting the regional president, Mr Ruslan Aushev, and visiting a hospital and a refugee camp. Tomorrow she will travel into Chechnya and visit the devastated city of Grozny. She will then go to the Novolakskaya region of Dagestan where the inhabitants are virulently opposed to the Chechen rebels before returning to Moscow. All travel within the region will be by military helicopter.

Despite a recommendation to the contrary from Mrs Robinson's office in Geneva, the Russian authorities have refused permission for The Irish Times to travel with the United Nations group. The reason cited was that only two helicopters were being provided with room for the official Russian and UN delegations.

The Russian authorities have been strongly critical of Mrs Robinson's attitude to the human rights situation in Chechnya and are expected to present her with a document critical of human rights under the region's president, Mr Aslan Maskhadov, but which does not deal with alleged abuses on the Russian side.

The New-York based Human Rights Watch (HRW) organisation issued a statement yesterday accusing Russian troops of summarily executing seven people in the Chechen village of Geki-Chu last month. HRW also alleges that large numbers of Chechen women have been raped by Russian soldiers. A Russian colonel has been arrested for "humiliating" and then murdering a local woman.

Russian military sources say there are 3,400 rebels operating in Chechnya at the moment: 2,000 in the southern mountains, 1,000 on the northern plains and 400 still in Grozny.