American seeks Chechen return - report

MOSCOW, Russia -- An American relief worker freed after an almost month-long kidnap ordeal in Chechnya is reported to be keen to continue his charity work in the region.

Colleagues at Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) welcomed Kenneth Gluck back to his Moscow base on Tuesday where he said he was healthy, and said he was well treated by his captors, according to reports.

Earlier Gluck, head of the local operation of MSF -- also known as Doctors Without Borders -- met the leader of an adjoining province of Chechnya who said the 38-year-old wanted to carry on helping the victims of several years of conflict in the breakway republic.

But a spokesman at the Nobel Prize-winning charity's headquarters in Amsterdam said that despite Gluck's release on Saturday, security concerns remained and it was too early to resume operations in Chechnya.

"I am well and healthy, and I'm very happy that I was released and very happy to be with the MSF team here, and with friends," Gluck said after meeting Ruslan Aushev, president of Ingushetia, a region hosting more than 100,000 Chechen refugees.

Gluck told reporters he was grateful to all the people who worked for his release.

Interfax news agency reported Aushev as saying: "Despite a month's incarceration he seemed to be in high spirits and was cracking jokes."

Aushev added that Gluck said his abductors had treated him well and even "apologised for the inconveniences they had inflicted."

He said Gluck had told him he wanted to continue as MSF's regional co-ordinator, but it was up to the organisation's headquarters in the Netherlands to decide whether he could stay on.

Dogged resistance

The New Yorker flew back to Moscow after being freed in what Russia says was an operation carried out by its FSB domestic security police.

He was kidnapped on January 9 by masked gunmen near the Chechen regional capital Grozny.

Russia launched a military crackdown in Chechnya in October 1999, pledging to end the lawlessness which had plagued the North Caucasus region since it won de facto independence in a 1994-96 conflict with Moscow.

Russian troops have taken control of the Chechen capital Grozny and most of the region's other districts, but they are still facing dogged resistance by small groups of rebels who have denied involvement in the seizure of Gluck.

Gluck strode quickly through the waiting crowd of journalists at Moscow's Vnukovo airport and was greeted by several MSF colleagues, who handed him flowers.

He declined to make any comments, but promised to hold a news conference in Moscow and was expected to fly to the United States on Wednesday.

The treatment of Gluck by the unknown kidnappers and the release by Russian security services was in stark contrast to the fate of many other kidnap victims in the region, who have been brutalised and even decapitated.

Gluck's abduction last month in Chechnya prompted international relief organisations to suspend operations there, but Aushev said he hoped Gluck's safe release would pave the way for aid workers to return.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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History of Chechnya
Doctors Without Borders

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