NEW CONSTITUTION: REFERENDUM OR DECREE?

On July 16, the website of the pro-Moscow Chechen administration announced that “the draft of a new constitution for the Chechen Republic will be presented to a [popular] referendum in November of 2002” (Kavkaz.strana.ru, July 16). On July 17, however, a deputy prime minister of the pro-Moscow government, former convicted embezzler Bislan Gantamirov, told Interfax that: “The Constitution can be adopted in a popular referendum or by a plenipotentiary Constitutional Assembly. Furthermore, it can be adopted by the State Duma or a [Russian] presidential decree.”