A Chechen warlord threatened a "jihad" or holy struggle today to wreck the Kremlin's plans to pacify the region with a presidential election, but the pro-Moscow government vowed the polls would go ahead as planned.
Mr Shamil Basayev, Russia's public enemy number one and the mastermind of many attacks on Russian targets, said his forces would keep up their campaign against soldiers and civilians.
"Russia can hold referendums and elections, pay compensation to bribe those demoralised by this war...they can employ public relations companies...but, Allah willing, our Jihad will continue until we win," he said on the rebel Web site www.kavkazcenter.com.
Mr Basayev organised the seizure of a Moscow theatre last October, in which 129 theatre-goers died after Russian forces stormed the building, and July's twin suicide attack on a rock-concert in the capital at which 15 people were killed.
In today's statement Mr Basayev also claimed responsibility for a truck bombing that levelled a military hospital in southern Russia in August, killing 50 people. Such strikes beyond Chechnya's borders would go on, he said.
"Our diversionary acts will continue on Russian territory as long as the occupiers do not quit our country," he said.
But Mr Anatoly Popov, the acting president of the Muslim region, said his government would ensure nothing would disrupt election campaigning or the vote itself on October 5th, only months before Russian parliamentary and presidential elections. "The most important job of the government in this period is to make sure our work continues in a reasonable way, so there are no setbacks," he told the daily Izvestia.
Elections are key to President Mr Vladimir Putin's plan to pacify Chechnya, where separatists have fought Moscow for a decade. Mr Putin refuses to negotiate with the rebels who ruled a de facto independent Chechnya for three years until 1999.