Chechen rebel president Aslan Maskhadov is planning to set up an independent entity in the republic’s southern mountains while giving up the plains, a senior Russian military official in the region said on Sunday.
Maskhadov, who was elected president in Russia’s turbulent southern republic in January 1997, "is ready to give up the flatlands to the federal authorities and have the mountains for himself," Colonel Ilya Shabalkin, spokesman for Russian armed forces in the Northern Caucasus, told the Interfax news agency. The rebel leader is seeking in this way "to save his post as president of the non-existent Ichkeria (the Chechen name for the southern republic) in the eyes of the world community," Shabalkin said.
| I believe this is what used to be known as a bandit's moutain fastness. We're talking robber barons and impregnable fortresses here... |
Maskhadov’s mandate — initially recognised by Moscow but later contested — expired in January 2002, and last month Moscow organised a controversial presidential election in Chechnya in which the chief pro-Russian administrator, Akhmad Kadyrov, became president under a new constitution. The poll was widely perceived as rigged. Some 30,000 Russian troops permanently stationed in Chechnya since Moscow intervened militarily four years ago were allowed to vote on the same footing as local residents. Maskhadov’s plan has no future, Shabalkin said. The rebel leader "is also ready to accept Ichkeria’s membership in the Russian Federation as an autonomous entity.
| Sounds like the Bandido-Kabardino Autonomous Region... |
"The federal authorities will not even discuss this plan, let alone accept it." |