Chechnya Legislature Confirms Putin Pick

Ramzan Kadyrov, left, approved as Chechnya's president by the regional legislature, and Ingushetia's President Murat Zyazikov, right, seen during celebrations in Grozny, Chechnya, Friday, March 2, 2007. Chechnya's parliament approved widely feared strongman Ramzan Kadyrov as the war-battered Russian republic's new president Friday in a near-unanimous vote seen as a foregone conclusion a day after President Vladimir Putin made the nomination. (AP Photo/Musa Sadulayev) (Musa Sadulayev - AP)

GROZNY, Russia -- Chechnya's parliament approved a widely feared former security chief as president of the war-battered Russian republic in a nearly unanimous vote Friday, a day after President Vladimir Putin nominated him.

The confirmation of Ramzan Kadyrov, which had been seen as a foregone conclusion, cements his rise to power. His nomination won 56 votes in the 58-member, two-chamber legislature, with two ballots ruled invalid.

Human rights groups allege that security forces under Kadyrov's control abduct and torture civilians suspected of ties to Chechnya's separatist rebels. Some observers suggest he was tied to last year's murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who had reported extensively on Chechnya's wars and sufferings. Kadyrov has denied any involvement.

Kadyrov also is credited with a reconstruction boom that he administered as the region's prime minister, under which the capital, Grozny, is being transformed from a moonscape of rubble and shattered buildings in a region devastated by two separatist wars since the Soviet collapse.

Kadyrov has been at the heart of a Kremlin strategy to crush continued rebel resistance and establish order in the mostly Muslim region. He turned 30 in October, the minimum age for president, and had been expected to seek the job.

He became acting president after last week's dismissal of Alu Alkhanov, who had increasingly criticized Kadyrov.

Kadyrov is the son of Chechnya's first pro-Moscow president, Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in 2004. The elder Kadyrov became president in 2003 in a Kremlin-conducted aimed at undermining rebels by creating the image of Chechens being allowed a high degree of self-determination.

As prime minister, the younger Kadyrov led a largely federally funded campaign to rebuild the region. Two wars in the past dozen years between Russian forces and separatist rebels who increasingly voiced militant Islamic ideology left much of the republic in ruins and its people gripped by fear and resentment.

Major offensives died down early this decade, but small clashes continue and rebels attack Russian forces with booby-traps and remotely detonated explosives.

Construction and repairs have transformed the capital, Grozny, and the second-largest city, Gudermes. Buildings have been plastered with banners praising Kadyrov and his late father, part of a personality cult he claims to oppose.

But prominent Russian groups boycotted a human rights conference in Grozny this week, saying that attending would lend his government legitimacy. Council of Europe human rights commissioner Thomas Hammarberg, who was at the conference, said Friday that Chechnya continues to be plagued by allegations of torture and by officials' failure to respond to families seeking information about missing relatives.

Hammarberg declined to comment when asked for his opinion on Kadyrov as president and he did not point to Kadyrov's forces as responsible for abuses.