Kremlin's man wins Chechen presidential vote

Akhmad Kadyrov, a one-time secessionist rebel who switched sides, was poised for victory in an election whose outcome was a foregone conclusion. Kremlin officials are sure to trumpet it as a big step towards normalising life in the mainly Muslim region.

Russia has battled separatist fighters in the region on and off for nine years with the loss of tens of thousands of lives.

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With all real rivals having quit the race, preliminary results showed Kadyrov had won 81.1 percent of the 70 per cent of votes counted from Sunday's poll in the war-devastated territory on Russia's mountainous southern fringes.

"Kadyrov is on the lead and we can already say it is impossible for others to catch up," Abdul-Kerim Arsakhanov, head of Chechnya's electoral commission, told reporters.

President Vladimir Putin, in comments before the election but made public only on Monday, said he hoped Kadyrov, if elected, would use his past rebel links to good effect.

"I hope that his contacts with these people (the rebels) who are still opposing us in Chechnya and his influence on them will be positive," he told the New York Times in remarks appearing on the Kremlin Web site.

The elections passed off peacefully with no major incidents.

But the separatist guerrillas who harry Russian troops by day and night in Chechnya and whose women fighters have staged suicide attacks even in Moscow have vowed to fight on.

They dismiss the election as pointless and say the fight goes on to end Russian dominance and turn their homeland into an independent state.

And many Russian commentators have expressed doubts the election will bring a quick end to the bloodshed which has often spread far beyond Chechnya's borders.