Kremlin to pull troops out of Chechnya
Russia is to reduce its vast military deployment in Chechnya and rely more on police and special forces.
Sergei Yastrzhembsky, chief Kremlin spokesman on the 16-month war, has not said how many troops will be pulled back from the mountain province or when they would leave.
He says the plan, approved by Vladimir Putin, might lead to a transfer of control over the province from the Ministry of Defence to another government agency.
He has indicated the direction is toward greater civilian control.
"This is what Chechen society is calling for," he said.
Russia's military has bit by bit reduced its deployment from a peak of about 100,000 soldiers since wide-scale fighting stopped last spring.
It was not clear how dramatically the new plan would change this pace.
Also, any plan to transfer authority to civilians is handicapped by the extremely low level of popular support for Chechnya's pro-Moscow civilian government.
Led by former Muslim cleric Akhmad Kadyrov, the government's members are targets of almost daily assassination attempts.
However, if it is carried out, the transfer plan resembles what foreign governments have asked Russia to consider as a step toward resolving the protracted conflict in Chechnya, where hundreds of people have died in fighting this winter in which no ground exchanged hands.
On Thursday, a delegation from the Council of Europe urged Russia to reduce the size of its deployment. The council suspended Russia's voting rights over the Chechnya war, and its Parliamentary Assembly was scheduled to debate the war next week.
