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WASHINGTON, Aug 30: The United States on Monday denounced weekend presidential polls in the strife-torn Russian republic of Chechnya, saying the election did not meet international standards for freedom and fairness.
At the same time, the State Department urged Sunday's victor, Kremlin-anointed career police officer Alu Alkhanov, to work with all Chechens, including guerillas engaged in a bloody war with Moscow, to promote a political settlement to the conflict.
"We know that there were serious flaws in the electoral process there, especially the earlier disqualification of a leading candidate on a mere technicality," spokesman Richard Boucher said. "It is possible to say that yesterday's presidential vote did not meet international standards for a democratic election," he told reporters.
Mr Alkhanov, who on Monday vowed to consign Chechnya's separatist extremists to the "dustbin of history," won a crushing victory in the vote, but observers have raised serious questions about the validity of the poll, noting that electoral officials reported dizzyingly high turnout figures when polling stations had often been deserted.
RUSSIAN PRESS: The Russian press on Monday cast doubt on the massive turnout figures for the weekend vote in Chechnya that handed the Kremlin candidate a landslide victory, pointing to several violations witnessed by their reporters.
"The name of the winner was known in advance. This as well as the threats of the rebels and the good weather meant Chechens lost any desire to go to the ballot box," said the daily Kommersant.
The newspapers could not hide their surprise that turnout figures of almost 80 percent had been recorded on a day when the streets of the Chechen capital Grozny were almost devoid of local residents.
"On Sunday, Grozny offered a surreal image: half-destroyed houses under a scorching sun and not a soul in the streets," Izvestia wrote. A Kommersant reporter in Grozny said he had cast his ballot in four different polling stations without any hindrance.
"In voting station 61 no-one asks for my voting papers and they write my name down on the supplementary list. In the voting station number 59 in Tolstoy Yurt there are very few voters and the officials are delighted by my request to vote. I show my passport and they give me a voting slip," the paper's reporter said.
He also managed to vote in Grozny in two other polling stations, the paper said. "They had better name a president," read the headline of the daily Vremya Novostei, quoting the words of a Chechen voter who said the money spent on the poll would have better been used to "clean the sewers."
With 84.5 percent of the votes counted, the Kremlin-backed candidate Alu Alkhanov had reduced the other six candidates to the status of also-rans by polling 74 percent, according to local election officials. -AFP
