Novosti Gruzia quoted Minister Eteri Astemirova as saying that one Chechen refugee had already applied.
Havid Husein, country director for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said the agency would provide material support for Chechen refugees willing to settle in Georgia on a permanent basis. He said the agency had been in the country for a decade and that it had been running aid programs for Chechen refugees since 2000.
According to statistics cited by Asterimova, 1,500 of the registered refugees belong to a Chechen ethnic group known as Kistin, with origins in Georgia; 900 are Chechens proper; 23, ethnic Azeris; 31, Georgians; and several, Russians and Ingush.
The minister said that despite their refugee status, the displaced Chechens did not receive as much aid as refugees from the troubled Georgian regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali.
Asterimova and Tbilisi-based UNHCR officials are going Thursday to the Pankissi Gorge, near the border with Chechnya, to see the situation on the ground and find out what the refugees staying there need most.
