NO END TO WAR WITHOUT CONSOLIDATED POWER.

In an interview with the weekly Obshchaya Gazeta (no. 50, December 13), Adlan Magomedov, the official representative of the pro-Moscow Chechen civilian administration to Moscow, observed: “The situation in the republic can calm down within three months’ time, but only if the whole plenitude of power is transferred to Akhmad Kadyrov. So long as all-possible generals give commands independently of one another in Chechnya, the war will continue. And there is another condition: the Chechen police must be composed of local residents and not of persons sent in from outside the republic.” And what about negotiations with the separatists? “These are games,” Magomedov replied contemptuously. “One should speak not with marionettes living in the mountains but with their puppeteers who sit in warm offices [from the context a reference to the Russian special services].”