LEWISTON - At first glance, Starye Atagi doesn't seem like the typical candidate for sister city status.

Located in Chechnya, the war-torn town of 12,000 features bombed out buildings, devastated industrial mills and a population in desperate need of the basics. Its schools are overcrowded. Its hospitals are loaded with people suffering from the aftereffects of war.

It is not much like - and has little to offer - Lewiston, Maine.

But on Tuesday, an assistant professor from the University of Southern Maine's Lewiston-Auburn College will propose that city councilors form a relationship with Stare Atagi - pronounced Star-yee At-a-kee - and make it only the second international town to be called Lewiston's sister city.

Lewiston has rebuilt itself after a major industrial slide, Barry Rodrigue said. He thinks it can help Starye Atagi rebuild after war.

"I want us to offer moral support, to provide encouragement to a small city in Chechnya trying to maintain a civil society," he said. "I want to show them there is hope."

Rodrigue, an associate arts and humanities professor and advisor to the International Students Organization, began working to promote democracy in Russia in 2003. Over the years, he and students have donated clothes, books and other goods to help people in war-ravaged Chechnya.

Last year, Rodrigue suggested establishing a sister city relationship with a community in Chechnya. A Chechen businessman and human rights advocate suggested Starye Atagi.

Once a prosperous community, Starye Atagi has been nearly decimated by war. A Google search of the town turns up references to it in Anna Politkovskaya's book "A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya."

Rodrigue has worked to raise money to help the town re-establish its block and brick factory and repair buildings, but he believes a sister city relationship can help Starye Atagi in other ways.

"Mutual support," he said. "This is probably where I'll play a good bit of a role, in sharing with them how business industry, civic leadership and all of this functions here in Lewiston and in the United States as a whole, and bring that over there and explain to them just how things work in their sister city."

Lewiston has one sister city already, according to the City Clerk's Office. In August, Lewiston and Auburn formed a partnership with La Communaute de Communes de Pays Foyen, a collection of rural French towns near the wine-making Bordeaux region. The 15 communities - quaint-looking villages surrounded by farms and vineyards - have worked together under a single mayor since 2002 and Lewiston-Auburn officials hoped to learn how they collaborated. They also hoped to start correspondence between schoolchildren.

Rodrigue will propose a Lewiston-Starye Atagi relationship during the City Council meeting Tuesday. The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at city hall.