He accused Russia of not doing enough to help the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing to Ingushetia.

The following are excerpts from the interview:

"To date, 178,166 people have left the Chechen Republic. This is the figure for the past few days, since the start of fighting. In all there are 195,000 in the republic [of Ingushetia].

Naturally, we face difficulties providing for them. We are experiencing a lot of shortages.

We are concerned about a large number of refugees on the Baku-Rostov federal highway. They have been there for over a week. There are dead among them. They are dying from heart failure and other illnesses... Some are even giving birth there

I think that the procedure for letting refugees through has not been properly organised. It is an insult to the people...

Refugees are stranded on the border in freezing weather

There are several thousand people at the Assinovskaya and Sernovodskaya crossing. They are there day and night, waiting to be allowed to pass through...

I do realize that they need to carry out checks... OK, carry out your checks, but why are they checking women and children? I do understand that men should be checked, but why women, children and the elderly?...

There has been no help from the federal authorities over the past 24 hours. We only received aid - flour, butter, wheat and cereals - from the UN High Commission for Refugees...

Little help from Moscow

They [the federal authorities] have allocated 45m roubles [1.7m US dollars], which is next to nothing, especially as 50 per cent of it has to be spent on food each day. Just imagine, we have to feed 180,000 people each day...

Both orally and in writing I have told the president and the prime minister about the problems, and the problem of refugees who are being tormented at the checkpoint. ...

These steps can only be justified if indeed Russia is right to claim that everyone in Chechnya is a terrorist.

Catastrophe

If they start looking for terrorists throughout Grozny, I think the remaining 50% would also flee, which means that 70,000-80,000 people would arrive here. The total number might rise to 280,000-380,000 people...

Why is it that no-one describes the situation as a catastrophe? Everyone seems to be ashamed of this word. I believe that this is a human and humanitarian catastrophe."

A Russian tank passes a Chechen woman fleeing with her possessions

Mr Aushev said that the only person in the Russian government who was doing anything to help Ingushetia cope with the influx of refugees, was Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matviyenko.

She told the radio station there was a shortage of food and accommodation for those displaced by the fighting in Chechnya.

She said the federal authorities were offering to resettle them in other republics, stressing that it was only a temporary measure, but very few agreed to leave the region.

The following are excerpts from her interview:

"They are not refugees. Refugees are those who leave their country. We are talking about people who have left their houses temporarily for different reasons - because our federal forces are carrying out an operation to eliminate bandit formations there or because they are frightened...

Awful poverty

We are doing everything to organise normal life in the areas of Chechnya which have been liberated and are now under the control of the federal forces. You know, what we saw there when the federal forces arrived was awful poverty...

We must do everything possible to restore normal life there, restore law and order...

Next week we will begin to pay pensions, including arrears in pensions and wages. We are providing them with food and medicines. Can you believe that even the first preliminary check has revealed 15,000 TB patients? There is an outbreak of polio there - something Russia has forgotten.

Polio

We must carry out urgent immunization against polio among children, to put out this outbreak...

Some people agree [to be resettled] and we take them out of Ingushetia and adjacent Chechen areas free of charge...

In northern Chechnya, which is under the control of the federal forces, people are rapidly coming back. They see that normal life is being restored there. So they are coming back.

Their numbers could be greater, but we don't want to force people to move."

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.