LAT: Pro-Moscow Chechen Leaders Try to Portray a Return to Normality

[NoPasaran]

GUDERMES, Russia — Less than two years ago, Akhmad Kadyrov Street was one of the endless thoroughfares of rubble and weeds that crisscross Chechnya, the scar tissue of Russia's systematic bombing campaign against the separatist republic. No more.

Today, shaded with trees and framed neatly with sidewalks, it features a new sports club, basketball court, gymnasium, orphanage, boxing gym and Chechnya's only functioning hotel — before the rubble takes over again at the end of the block.

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As European leaders push for a negotiated end to the long-running separatist conflict, Chechnya's pro-Moscow government is taking unusual pains to portray the effort as unnecessary.

"The fact that representatives of some democratic Western countries support these criminal actions of the so-called fighters for the freedom of the Chechen republic arouses no less than bewilderment," Chechen President Alu Alkhanov said at a meeting of three dozen political, religious and clan leaders last month in the republic's capital, Grozny.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-waterpark3apr03.story