GROZNY - Chechnya's first post war president, Mr Aslan Maskhadov, a former Soviet artillery colonel who led separatist rebels against Russian troops, took office yesterday promising to strengthen the Muslim religion and fight a crime wave in the region.
"Now it's the duty of each and every one of us to realise the expectations of our ancestors, our heroes fallen in the holy war, of the right to live freely and independently," Col Maskhadov told rebels and Russian representatives in the Chechen capital.
Mr Alexander Lebed, the former security adviser to President Boris Yeltsin, sat in the audience.
