Chechnya: news | arguments | facts
09 March 2007 Chechen airport reopens for business
On a runway newly reconstructed with funds from Moscow, a passenger plane landed in Grozny on Thursday after a seven-year break imposed by Chechnya's bloody wars for independence.
After a two-and-a-half-hour flight from Moscow, the 70 passengers in the Aeroflot-Don airliner were greeted amid heavy security by Ramzan Kadyrov, the southern republic's 30-year-old newly appointed strongman president.
With armed guards stationed around the building, Kadyrov said the war-battered city now had "the most beautiful airport in the north Caucasus," replete with an arrivals hall decked out with marble and fountains.
"All the conditions are now in place to ensure that passengers feel safe from their first minute in the airport," he said after the Tupolev 134 plane landed at 12:50 pm (09H50 GMT), guided in by a brand new control tower.
But security officials were leaving nothing to chance.
"As well as surveillance cameras, we've got people in plainclothes watching the passengers," head of security Kheda Mogamedova told Russian television.
With Grozny's residents more used to the roar of bombers and helicopter gunships overhead, the sound of a passenger jet was welcome as Chechens hope for more peaceful times ahead.
"We waited for a long time. But finally there is stability, peace," passenger Peta Guanieva told the Russian Pervyi Kanal.
For the moment, there will be three return flights every week to Moscow, costing around 5,400 rubles (160 euros, 200 dollars) one way, but Kadyrov promised that flights to other Russian cities would start "very soon."
The airport was an important base for the Russian military during Moscow's two wars in Chechnya in the 1990s: a 1994-96 conflict in which Russian forces suffered a humiliating defeat and a second assault that began in 1999 and continues today in the form of low-level skirmishes.
The young Kadyrov, appointed last week, loves fast cars, lives in a residence adorned with battlements and bronze lions in the Chechen town of Gudermes, and is a regular at some of Moscow's most luxurious nightspots.
But behind his charismatic appeal, rights campaigners accuse him of being responsible for widespread human rights abuses carried out by his security forces.
AFP
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09 March 2007 Kadyrov nominates Baisultanov for Chechen prime minister
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov told journalists at the Grozny airport on Thursday that it had proposed to the lower chamber of the Chechen parliament that it confirm Odes Baisultanov as prime minister.
Baisultanov is currently Chechen first deputy prime minister.
"Baisultanov has managed to resolve very difficult problems related to the restoration of facilities vital to the republic in a brief time," Kadyrov said.
Interfax
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08 March 2007 Drug-stores to Be Taken under Strict Control
Chechnya is enforcing strict control over its drug-store system the medicines available and customer services.
This is absolutely necessary, Grozny central rural hospitals chief, Akhmad Yushayev believes. In Chechnya, as in the rest of Russia, from 40 to 70 percent of all medicines are either spurious, unlicensed or low quality stuff. Moreover, many drug-stores and nearly all medical supplies outlets are devoid of proper storage conditions, and as a result the patients who buy them could get more harm rather than benefit from them. Quite frequently drug-store employees sell medicines that are out of date and even sell
narcotics over the-counter which are banned for sales without a special prescription.
Akhmad Yushayev cited those examples on the basis of findings reached by a special commission which studied the drug-store system in the region. The republics law-enforcement agencies have also made regular on-the-spot checks of drug-stores, focusing primarily on proper medical documentation and availability of proper licensing for narcotic distribution. The chief doctor recalls a case of a former analytical laboratory that once operated in Chechnya, which checked the validity of drugs distributed through the
drug-stores. Until such a laboratory is recreated, the only barrier to spurious drugs is maintained by Chechenmedfarm, which as of last year has assumed the task of ensuring medical supplies from the Mandatory Medical Insurance Fund. Akhmad Yumashev has called for care from all those who would use drug-store services. It is absolutely necessary to pay attention to the validity of medicines in keeping with the recipe and their expiry dates. Medicines beyond expiry date may only harm the person who would use
them. Akhmad Yushayev is convinced that control over the drug-store sales should be strict and all-encompassing.
(more News from Chechnya...)
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