CHECHNYA voted for a new president yesterday in an election overshadowed by terrorist attacks that downed two airliners and a major rebel assault on Grozny last week.

The Chechen capital was a virtual ghost town and at several polling stations visited by The Times voters were outnumbered by Russian soldiers and pro-Moscow Chechen militia.

One young Chechen blew himself up with a hand grenade after police stopped him from approaching a polling station in Grozny, but nobody else was hurt, witnesses said.

“People are afraid,” said Ruslan Isakov, 36, as he waited to cast his vote in the town of Soveletskaya. “We are tired of all this fighting. We want peace and work and normal lives but many people are too frightened to vote.”

Chechen rebels assassinated the last Moscow-backed President, Akhmad Kadyrov, in a bomb attack in May and have pledged to kill whoever wins the election.

But the Kremlin hopes that the election will revive a plan to bring peace and stability to Chechnya a decade after first sending in troops to prevent it splitting from Russia.

The result of yesterday’s poll, analysts say, is a foregone conclusion since Moscow has thrown its weight behind one candidate — the Chechen Interior Minister Alu Alkhanov — who has dominated coverage on local and national television.

Posters and slogans urging Chechens to vote for him were plastered all around the region on walls, trees and even military roadblocks.

Critics say that Mr Alkhanov, a political unknown until a few months ago, lacks the experience and credibility either to deal with Moscow or to disarm rebels who have staged increasingly audacious attacks over the past few months.

“The authorities will be signing the death warrant of the man they pick,” the London-based rebel representative, Akhmed Zakayev, said in a recent statement.

“Neither the election nor Russia’s current policy in Chechnya will bring the desired results. There will be no peace in the Caucasus until Russia ends its imperial ambitions.”

The Kremlin’s peace plan has been severely undermined this year by a suicide bomb attack on the Moscow metro, Mr Kadyrov’s assassination and a rebel assault on the neighbouring region of Ingushetia.

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