The Council of Europe has sent monitors to Chechnya probe Russia's human rights record in the disputed province.
The delegation from the Council's parliamentary assembly (PACE), headed by Lord Frank Judd, flew from Moscow to the southern Russian city of Stavropol at the start of a four-day mission to gather information ahead of a key debate at the 41-nation assembly.
The monitors are to draw up a report for the Strasbourg-based assembly's winter session, scheduled for January 22-26, which is set to debate whether to reinstate Russia's voting rights, suspended last April because of the Chechen conflict.
The PACE team is due to hold talks with President Vladimir Putin's special human rights envoy to Chechnya, Vladimir Kalamanov, as well as the republic's pro-Moscow administrator, Akhmad Kadyrov.
Kalamanov said that Lord Judd and his colleague, Germany's Rudolf Bindig, would get "a complete picture" of conditions in Grozny and the Chernokozovo detention camp where alleged atrocities prompted the suspension of Russia's voting privileges.
"I hope that the results of the improving situation during the past year will have some influence on the parliamentary assembly, whose decision last April was wrong, in my opinion," Kalamanov told the private NTV television channel.
Bindig told reporters "the most important" was for the delegation "to see some improvement in human rights" in Chechnya.
However, he conceded that the nature of the Chechen war had changed since the first reports of atrocities last year, adding: "It is now a guerrilla war, but even so we want to see more discipline among the Russian troops."
The PACE visit comes at a time of heightened tension in Chechnya following last Tuesday's kidnapping of Kenny Gluck, a US aid worker with the Nobel prize-winning charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).
Putin discussed Gluck's abduction by four masked gunmen at a meeting in the Kremlin with Kadyrov.
After the meeting, Kadyrov sought to relieve official pessimism over the chances of the American's early release by highlighting measures being taken by his staff to discover the whereabouts of the kidnappers and their victim.
"I have activated my own information channels. I believe that he (Gluck) will be freed. Maybe, the kidnappers will suggest either a ransom or a swap," Kadyrov was cited as saying by ITAR-TASS after the Kremlin meeting.
Lord Judd said today that the Gluck case highlighted the dangerous conditions and harassment which many aid workers encountered in the troubled Caucasus region.
"Whoever is responsible for this crime, what is clear is that such actions undermine the efforts of non-governmental humanitarian aid organisations," he said before leaving for Stavropol.
Meanwhile in Chechnya, military sources said separatist rebels were stepping up anti-Russian propaganda and preparing to carry out armed actions during the PACE delegation's visit in a bid to provoke a military clampdown.
"The rebels are hoping that these actions will provoke a sharp response by the military that will hurt civilians, so that the PACE representatives will register human rights violations," Interfax cited pro-Russian sources as saying.
Seven Russian troops had been killed and at least 10 others wounded in fighting after a military truck hit a rebel landmine, the press service of Chechen separatist president Aslan Maskhadov told AFP Sunday.
The Russian soldiers, who were members of the interior ministry's elite OMON unit, were killed in a shootout late on Friday on the outskirts of the Chechen capital Grozny.
Russia has been fighting a 15-month war against the rebels in Chechnya since launching a self-styled "anti-terrorist" operation in the troubled republic on October 1, 1999.
It became the first member in the Council of Europe's 50-year history to be stripped of its voting rights last April because of human rights abuses committed by its troops in the breakaway republic.
The Council of Europe will meet officials at the Russian interior and defence ministries on Wednesday after flying back to Moscow.
AFP