Gantamirov to run for president

Bislan Gantamirov, former deputy prime minister of Chechnya, is going to lodge papers to the local electoral commission in the next few days with a request to register him as candidate for the post of head of the republic. This is what a source from Gantamirov's closest milieu has told Caucasian Knot's correspondent. Bislan Gantamirov has made a firm decision to run for president of the Chechen Republic, according to the interlocutor. "Bislan is a sufficiently well-known and respected man in the republic. He will be an adequate rival to any of the contenders and he is going to win this election. He will lodge all necessary papers to the electoral commission in just a couple of days," the source maintains.

Bislan Gantamirov is forty-one. He started his career in politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Gantamirov then headed a fundamentalist party called Islamic Path that saw its ultimate goal in establishing Sharia rule in Chechnya. His party actively supported the coming of General Jokhar Dudaev to power in 1991.

Under Dudaev, Bislan Gantamirov became Grozny mayor. He supported actions of the anti-Dudaev opposition in 1993. Dudaev's units shot on June 4 the city hall where Bislan Gantamirov's armed supporters were. Gantamirov himself was wounded and went into hiding in his native village of Gekhi, Urus-Martan district. At the same time, Gantamirov began to staff his military unit and later on headed the armed units of the opposition. The anti-Dudaev opposition undertook an unsuccessful attack on Grozny in November 1994, which many republican residents think gave rise to the first "Chechen war."

When federal troops came, Bislan Gantamirov became mayor of the Chechen capital again and he next assumed the office of deputy prime minister. In the spring of 1996, Gantamirov was arrested in Moscow and convicted on a charge of significant embezzlement of federal funding (amounts of thirty to fifty billion rubles were mentioned). As another military campaign began in Chechnya in the autumn of 1999, President Boris Yeltsin urgently issued a special decree to pardon him. Gantamirov was entrusted forming "militia" units to demonstrate support to actions of federal forces from residents of the republic.

In December 2000, Bislan Gantamirov became Grozny mayor for a third time. He was chief federal inspector with the staff of the envoy of the Russian president to the South federal district between June 2001 and February 2002. He next assumed the office of deputy prime minister and minister of press, information and mass communications of the Chechen Republic. In September 2003, the Ministry of Press of the Chechen Republic was abolished and Gantamirov was dismissed.

People with access to Bislan Gantamirov maintain he enjoys patronage from General Anatolii Kvashnin, chief of the Russian General Staff.