One Thousand Troops will Be Withdrawn from Chechnya

In March 2003, more than a thousand men and about 200 pieces of military equipment will be withdrawn from the territory of the Chechen republic to the places of their permanent deployment, RIA Novosti was told in the Russian Defence Ministry on Monday.

According to a spokesman for the ministry, the General Staff of the Armed Forces, jointly with the federal bodies of the executive power, has worked out a plan, according to which a new stage of withdrawing troops from Chechnya will start in the near future. Taking into consideration the stable tendency towards the normalisation of the situation on the greater part of the plain territory of the republic, and the transfer of the powers to the bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the plan provides in the first place for the withdrawal of the units which were earlier used to block inhabited area and the areas of terrorists' activity.