UNITED NATIONS -- With another bitterly cold winter on the way and tuberculosis rates on the rise, nearly 250,000 people in Chechnya face a cutoff of U.N. food aid.

Donor countries say the U.N. World Food Program has been too slow to update its approach. The agency says a highly vulnerable population now risks going hungry. There is evidence Russia shares the blame.

WFP officials told United Press International the agency can finance its efforts through the end of November. But with the European Commission Humanitarian Organization, the program's principal donor, threatening to scale back aid, U.N. officials are warning they may be forced to shut down the program for the second winter in a row.

Last year, at the height of the coldest winter recorded in Russia in 25 years, no food aid was distributed from November to March.

Doctors working in the region have said malnutrition, persistent stress, unemployment and growing poverty combined to cause a tuberculosis outbreak in Chechnya. WFP is already assisting some 650 victims of the illness, though Mia Turner, a WFP spokeswoman based in Cairo, told UPI the stigma attached to tuberculosis could mean many cases have gone unreported.

But even when donor countries do meet the demands, food aid does not always follow.

In July, WFP released an urgent plea for more aid. In fact, a shipment from the U.S. Agency for International Development had already arrived the previous September, but the food was held up at the main St. Petersburg port. The two shipments carried a total of 2,600 metric tons of iron-enriched wheat flour, but Russian officials told WFP the food did not meet health standards. The iron levels were too high, they said, and would not be permitted passage to Chechnya. Negotiations continued for months, but no solution emerged.

Only now, after a year of waiting, has the agency resolved to divert the aid to Afghanistan, Robin Lodge, a WFP spokesman, told UPI.

This was not the first time WFP has faced this kind of problem, Tatyana Chubrikova, the agency's Russia director, told UPI from Moscow. In 2001, a shipment was denied passage, leading to a temporary food shortage.

WFP prefers to buy food locally or regionally with money from donors, though sometimes, as with USAID, donors insist on contributing food directly.

Chubrikova said she hopes the American agency will now reconsider.

"Because of the problems at customs, we requested that now maybe cash is better at this stage," she said.