DOZENS OF CHECHEN REBELS PUT DOWN ARMS ON EVE OF
CONSTITUTIONAL REFERENDUM
Dozens of Chechen rebels put down their arms Saturday in a ceremony apparently designed to promote harmony in the war-ruined region on the eve of a constitutional referendum, officials said.
Russian and pro-Moscow Chechen officials looked on as 46 rebels put down their weapons in the Chechen capital Grozny, said the Mayor Oleg Zhidkov.
All 46 will be exempt from criminal prosecution, the Interfax news agency quoted Chechen administration chief Akhmad Kadyrov as saying at the ceremony.
The ceremony came a day before the region was to vote in a constitutional referendum that Moscow has advertised as the key to peace. The ceremony appeared to be an effort to set the tone for the referendum and show that Chechnya was on the path to normalcy after nearly a decade of war or lawlessness.
Meanwhile, violence continued in the region, killing at least two people on Saturday.
An armored personnel carrier exploded on a land mine in the capital Grozny, killing one soldier and one civilian in a passing car, said Ziya Abubakorva, a resident who witnessed the explosion.
She said two troops and two civilians were wounded. Grozny’s Hospital No. 9 confirmed that one civilian, the man driving the passing car, died of his wounds and that two women riding with him were injured.
Russia’s TVS television reported four military checkpoints in Grozny’s Staropromyslovsky district had been fired on overnight, but gave no word on casualties.
However, officials said the region was ready for the vote. ”Nobody plans to initiate any emergency measures — no curfew or anything else,” Chechnya’s Moscow-appointed prime minister, Anatoly Popov, told TVS.
Kadyrov, vowed the referendum would be a success.
”The people themselves want it,” the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted him as saying at soccer tournament in Grozny dubbed the ”Chechnya Revival Cup.”
Sunday’s vote will ask residents to approve a new Chechen constitution that cements the region’s status as part of Russia.
The Kremlin says it is the beginning of a peace process, but critics say it cannot take the place of negotiations with Chechnya’s elected president, rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov.
Russian troops fought an unsuccessful 1994-96 war against the rebels. After three years of de facto independence for Chechnya, troops returned after rebels raided a neighboring Russian region and after a deadly series of apartment house bombings in Russian cities. – Sapa-AP