Since the start of the US-led attacks on Afghanistan, there are some signs that support for rebels in Russia's breakaway republic of Chechnya has diminished while international co-operation to help Moscow's efforts in the region has increased.

But there is also scepticism by some outside observers of the extent of connections claimed by Russia between Chechen rebels and al-Qaeda.

The FSB, Russia's security police, says that based on intelligence sources including phone taps it estimates that funding to fighters in Chechnya - largely from countries in the Persian Gulf - had been about $6m a month in 2000, but that in the last few months, it had declined to $1-2m a month. It stresses the role of the umbrella of 80 Muslim Brotherhood organisations, of which al-Qaeda is one.

An FSB spokesman said the decline in financing partly reflected the diversion of funds to other causes - such as Afghanistan and Israel - as well as the effect of Russia closing down some organisations before and after September 11.

He said that foreign funds - much stolen from charitable donations raised by non-governmental organisations - were important for arms purchases, propaganda and combat, since each action in Chechnya carries a price: $100 to kill a Russian soldier; up to $1,000 for an officer; and $5,000 to destroy a helicopter, for example.

Russia claims that several hundred non-Chechens have been fighting within the republic, and has intercepted many conversations between rebel leaders in Arabic. The FSB claims that with the exception of Shamil Basayev, the other nine principal rebel leaders in Chechnya are foreign, including the Jordanian commander Khattab.

There have been reports that Zacarias Moussaoui, a man detained by the US in its investigation into the September 11 attacks, may have recruited at least two acquaintances to fight in Chechnya; and that three Algerian militants arrested in France had been trained in Afghanistan and Chechnya.

However, despite occasional speculation that some - even including Osama bin Laden - have fled from Afghanistan since the US bombings begun, there have no independently confirmed reports of a recent build-up of foreign fighters. Winter weather would also make the mountainous border crossings more difficult.

Aslan Maskhadov, the rebel Chechen leader, recently dismissed the suggestion that non-Chechens were a significant influence in the republic, arguing that they numbered a few dozen. His representative Akhmed Zakayev argued that most financial support came instead from Russian aid for reconstruction, with supplies of weapons from the Russian army.

Sergei Yastrzhemsbky, the Russian chief spokesman on Chechnya, says at least 300 Chechens have in the past received training in camps within Afghanistan, so their destruction during the US bombardment has helped cut down sources of future fighters.

He says the Russian medical centre set up in Kabul has received death threats by telephone by people speaking in Russia, but with an accent from the Caucasus.

But so far, there have been no confirmed reports of Chechens killed, arrested or taken by the US to its Cuban base from Afghanistan. He says the US has promised information on the subject but none has yet been provided, while that for the interim government of Hamid Karzai, "it is his one hundredth priority" to identify Chechens specifically.

What does seem clear is that in the weeks following Russia's support to the US-led coalition, there was markedly less Western criticism of its actions within Chechnya - although voices have begun to be raised again more recently, including meetings with representatives of the rebels by the US, French and UK governments.

There has also been international pressure to clamp down on rebel movements near to Chechnya. Neighbouring Georgia has backed down on its previous insistence to remove all Russian peace-keepers, and has even conducted some joint operations around the Pankisi Gorge, used to cross into Chechnya.

After long-running Russian accusations that Georgia was harbouring Chechen rebels, relations between the two countries have thawed a little in the last few months, with Russia removing its long-standing veto which blocked UN-led negotiations on the status of Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia.