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Chechnya votes, Russia denies capture of town

GROZNY: Russia's Defence Ministry denied a report on Sunday that about 2,000 Chechen fighters had seized a town in eastern Chechnya as locals and soldiers voted in a presidential poll.

"This is propaganda to make the situation tense," a ministry spokesman said by telephone. He said hundreds of people had already cast their ballots in the town of Nozhai-Yurt, which Interfax news agency reported had been occupied by guerrillas.

Acting President Vladimir Putin, hot favourite in the vote, said he had no information from Nozhai-Yurt, a town near the border with Dagestan which Russia said it had taken in January.

Armed police lined the streets of Chechnya's battered capital Grozny as residents, soldiers and relief workers voted.

Support for Putin, the architect of Russia's military campaign, was muted among local people. Many said they would vote against all 11 candidates.

"I am not voting for anyone. There is not one honest candidate," said Lydia, 66, praying in a razed church. A lone crucifix stood in front of the only wall still standing.

"The war was too cruel," she said.

Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Russia's main spokesman on Chechnya, was quoted by Interfax as saying troops were conducting an operation against rebels in the village of Tsentoroi, 20 km (12 miles) from Nozhai-Yurt.

"CAMPAIGN GOING TO PLAN"

He did not say what the operation was and a military commander told state RTR television that there was "no combat action" in the Nozhai-Yurt area. The Interior Ministry said the area was under Russian control.

Putin said the Chechen campaign was going according to plan but that he had no details of the situation in Nozhai-Yurt.

"There is information that there is some kind of rebel movement there. This is true," Putin told reporters after casting his ballot at a polling station in Moscow.

"We will use all forces and means which our troops have at their disposal against the people who are fighting."

In Grozny, the armed police were out to prevent guerrilla attacks disrupting the vote. Buses brought the elderly and ill from outlying regions, and car travel was largely banned.

"I did not expect such a high turnout," an election official in Grozny's Leninsky region said.

However, the turnout was likely to be higher at that polling station because more than 4,000 people pass through the doors of a nearby soup kitchen run by Russia's Emergencies Ministry each day to eat Russian-style porridge.

RIA news agency said more than 60 percent of Grozny's population had already voted, compared with less than 10 percent so far in Moscow, which is in the same time zone.

But some Chechens on Grozny's streets said that after two wars in the territory, they were not about to go to the polls.

"I am not going to vote because it's all the same to us," Khavra said as she walked along a deserted street with her friend and her small child riding a bicycle.

"There was the first war, now the second war. Nothing will change. The same people will get in. They're all bandits.-Reuters