Amnesty International on Monday urged Austria to dive straight into a discussion on human rights issues with Russian President Vladimir Putin when he visits Vienna later this week.
Putin is due in the Austrian capital on Thursday for an official two-day visit, and will meet Austrian President Thomas Klestil. Amnesty says Klestil should put human rights, particularly in Chechnya, on the agenda.
"Russia is trying to gloss over the situation in Chechnya. Serious abuses of human rights are being brushed under the carpet. A sad reality in a country which has been a member of the Council of Europe for five years," Heinz Patzelt, general secretary of Amnesty's Austrian branch, said in a statement.
The statement declared that 300,000 refugees displaced due to the fighting between Russian and rebel forces in Chechnya were still waiting to return to their homes, and also charged that the situation in Russian detention stations was "catastrophic".
"People are consistently mistreated and tortured," said Patzelt, adding that independent human rights organizations such as Amnesty International had been refused access to Chechnya to examine the situation.
"Amnesty urges the Austrian government to bring these issues up with President Putin," the statement read.
The Council of Europe suspended Russia's voting rights last year after a group of delegates said that overwhelming evidence pointed to human rights abuses in Chechnya, but it restored the voting rights last month.
The council said that Russia should be given a fresh chance to prove its willingness to bring about change in Chechnya. Russian authorities recently pledged 514 million dollars in aid for the province in 2001 for reconstruction.
Moscow poured troops into the separatist province on October 1, 1999, in what it called an anti-terrorist operation against separatists it accused of staging attacks across the country.
Putin is to meet with a range of figures during his Austria trip, inlcluding the president of parliament, Heinz Fischer, the head of the UN's drug unit, Pino Arlacchi, and leaders of the opposition parties.
A number of commercial accords between the two countries are due to be signed -- VIENNA (AFP)
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