A group of mothers of Russian soldiers who tried to organize a meeting in Brussels with a separatist Chechen leader aimed at ending the five-year war in Chechnya was denied entry visas by Belgium. The meeting with Akhmed Zakayev, who lives in exile in London and who was also refused entry by Belgian authorities, had been tentatively scheduled to be held in the European Parliament building on Tuesday.

"We did not receive our visas. The ladies at the embassy said that your case is political, and that they have not yet received permission from Brussels," the committee's chairwoman Valentina Melnikova told AFP by telephone.

"I think that we have touched a vital Russian nerve of everyone who is interested in prolonging this war.

"This is still more proof that our politicians need this war. First they say that these women will not be able to accomplish a thing, and then they are afraid that they will actually be able to achieve something."

The Belgian embassy in Moscow refused to comment on the visa denial.

The soldiers' mothers committee has been denounced as a terrorist-sponsored organization by senior Russian officials, but recognized for its reporting on Chechnya by Western human rights groups.

Earlier this month they founded a party to pursue their aim to bring the war to an end.

The Russian foreign ministry said Monday that the talks would fail even if they were ever held.

"Speaking honestly, as a human being, I can understand the motives the mothers' soldiers committee might have in meeting with representatives of (separatist Chechen leader Aslan) Maskhadov," ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said in a statement.

"At the same time, it is difficult to expect any results from such a meeting if it were held. I doubt that people who represent terrorists, and who have orders to kill Russian soldiers, have time to worry about those very same soldiers, or their mothers," Yakovenko said.

Zakayev denounced Yakovenko's statement, saying it amounted to warmongering.

"This sort of statement surprises me, considering that this 10 year war clearly senseless, and has carried a heavy toll on both the Russian and Chechen people."

Russia first moved its troops into Chechnya in 1994, withdrawing two years later in humiliating defeat and granting the republic de facto independence.

The mothers' committee alleges that the true death toll from the second Chechen war is three times higher that the state's reported estimate of around 5,000 soldiers.

It quotes figures collated from various hospitals around Russia to which wounded soldiers were taken. The Russian state only reports figures of troops killed in action in Chechnya.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has refused to hold negotiations with the rebels, calling them terrorists who must be wiped out rather than invited to the negotiating table.

The Brussels meeting also threatened to further complicate Moscow's relations with Europe, whose governments have questioned Russia's human rights record during the five-year war in the secessionist republic, and comes just two days ahead of Putin's summit with the European Union in The Hague.

Meanwhile Zakayev said in a statement that he hoped that Brussels might still change its mind both on his own entry and that of the soldiers' mothers.

"I hope that the situation with the visas sorts itself out in the nearest future," he said in a statement issued on London.

"I was hoping to fly to Brussels tomorrow (Tuesday) with a series of offers that, I am convinced, would open the path to actual peace."