Rival news organisations have claimed the authorship of a video showing mass graves and alleged atrocities by Russian forces in Chechnya.
The German TV station N24 was forced to admit last night that it bought the controversial video. Earlier it had claimed that its representative in Chechnya, Mr Frank Hoefling, had shot the video footage.
But a Russian journalist, Mr Oleg Blotsky of the Moscow daily newspaper Izvestia, claimed that he had taken pictures and that Mr Hoefling was not present when they were taken. Neither journalist has disputed the veracity of the footage.
Acting President Putin's spokesman, Mr Sergei Yastrzhembsky, has described the video as "serious material that requires examination on all sides". Russian military and interior ministry sources, however, dismissed it as "propaganda".
The disturbing pictures broadcast on BBC and on the Russian independent channel NTV showed a mass grave near the village of Goity west of Grozny containing mutilated bodies, some wrapped in barbed wire and others with their ears cut off. There were also signs, the report said, that some of the men had been tortured.
Pictures not shown on TV were even more disturbing, according to the BBC commentary. BBC reporter Jonathan Charles said Russian soldiers allowed the video to be taken because they objected to the orders they had to carry out and wanted the outside world to know what was going on.
The footage was released at an embarrassing time for Russian officials. The Council of Europe's human rights envoy, Mr Alvaro Gil-Robles, was in Moscow yesterday for talks on the conduct of the war, in which both sides are alleged to have committed serious human rights violations.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch organisation has accused Russian forces of summarily executing more than 100 civilians in Grozny and large numbers outside the capital. It has also gathered evidence that Chechen insurgents have used peaceful villagers as "human shields" in their battles with Russian troops.
While Mr Yastrzhembsky told reporters that the military prosecutor's office would "have to pay attention to this video material", he added that it was too early to give an assessment of the footage.
Other officials, however, dismissed the images as fakes. The spokesman for the federal security service, Mr Alexander Zdanovich, said that the pictures were propaganda designed to embarrass Russia at the time of Mr Gil-Robles's visit.
"In war conditions, your opponent gets killed. There can be no talk of any burial of people who were held in detention centres, because there is a rigorous and accurate account of everyone in the zone of military activity and of everyone who leaves it," Mr Zdanovich said.
He did not, however, offer an explanation for the mutilation of many of the bodies.
A statement from the military prosecutor's office to the official ITAR-TASS news agency appeared to pre-judge any inquiry. Describing the footage as "dubious" the statement added: "On the tape you cannot see the number of the vehicle, the faces of those involved, and it is not clear how the German cameraman came to be allowed to shoot the film, when it is hard even for Russian journalists to work in Chechnya."
Reuters adds: Reports of atrocities in Chechnya are "very troubling", President Bill Clinton said yesterday, and he urged Russia to allow international agencies to investigate alleged rights abuses in the region.
The President said the latest reports showed that it was necessary to conduct an investigation.
"I think they, again, make the case for the right kind of unfettered access to Chechnya and to the people there by the appropriate international agencies," President Clinton told reporters.
"I think it is imperative for the Russians to allow the appropriate international agencies unfettered access to do the right inquiries, to find out what really went on and to deal with it in an appropriate way," he said.
Washington recognises Moscow's sovereignty over Chechnya but has been critical of the methods it has used to quash resistance to its rule there.
Meanwhile, in a letter to Portuguese Foreign Minister Mr Jaime Gama, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, the US-based organisation Human Rights Watch said the EU had taken a "principled stand" when it warned Moscow before Christmas of serious repercussions for relations if the military were not restrained.
"However, in the first months of 2000, the EU's position has been significantly muted despite strong evidence of grave breaches of human rights and international humanitarian law by Russian forces," it said.
