EMERGENCY RULES PROPOSED FOR CHECHNYA.

At a meeting of leaders of the “antiterrorist operation,” held in the town of Essentuki, Stavropol Krai, the newly reappointed head of the Russian Combined Group of Forces, General Valery Baranov, proposed that elements of emergency rule should be introduced into Chechnya. It was necessary, he said, to get an appropriate law passed by the State Duma. “The bandits,” Baranov declared, “are warring against us without rules or a law, while we are forced to act according to the laws of peacetime.” The head of the special operation in Chechnya, FSB director Nikolai Patrushev, and the first deputy procurator general, Yury Biryukov, reportedly took exception to Baranov’s words. “If we refrained from introducing Emergency Rule in the period of the active phase of the operation, then we can get along without it during the present stage,” Biryukov said (Lenta.ru, August 3).