Baku. A dozen refugees from war-torn Chechnya staged a hunger strike in the Azeri capital Baku demanding that the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) upgrade their status, one of the participants told AFP Wednesday.

"Very few people have been given the status of internationally recognized refugees," said Ibragim Kaziyev who said he fled fighting between Russia and separatist rebels in the Chechen city Gudermes five years ago.

The strike was organized to coincide with the anniversary of the deportation by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin of the entire Chechen population to Central Asia in the closing days of World War II.

Kaziyev said the hunger strikers had repeatedly approached the UNHCR requesting that Chechens in Azerbaijan be given the status of internationally recognized refugees so that they could be entitled to more financial aid and possible asylum in a Western country.

"But they told us that they don't have enough money in their budget to do so," Kaziyev said.

A spokesman for the UNHCR in Baku said the organization was not ready to comment but acknowledged that it had been warned that the Chechens would launch a hunger strike Wednesday.

Russian troops poured into breakaway Chechnya in October 1999, more than five years ago, causing hundreds of thousands to flee for the second time in a decade.

Those who came here have been largely disenfranchised by local authorities who agreed to cut support after being pressured by Azerbaijan's former overlord Russia, which considers the mostly Muslim republic to have been a safe haven for rebels.