50 ex-militants hand over their weapons

Last month, Russian authorities announced amnesty for some militants.
GROZNY, Russia (AP) -- About 50 former militants surrendered and handed over their weapons Tuesday in a ceremony led by Chechnya's powerful prime minister, who said rebel numbers were dwindling in the war-ravaged region, officials said.
The ceremony in Chechnya's second-largest city, Gudermes, was the latest step in a campaign by Moscow-backed Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov to cast himself as a leader who is bringing peace to the republic after 12 years of nearly constant separatist conflict.
After the deaths of rebel warlord Shamil Basayev and another top Chechen separatist leader, Russian authorities announced last month an amnesty for militants who surrender and are not suspected of grave crimes -- a bid to end rebel resistance.
"Those who came to us, believing in us, become our confederates. We will work together for the benefit of the republic," Kadyrov said at the ceremony, according to a statement from his office.
Blames Yeltsin
Kadyrov -- whose father, Akhmad, opposed Russian authorities in Chechnya's 1994-96 war but switched sides and became Chechnya's first president -- suggested that the government of former President Boris Yeltsin was to blame for the years of bloodshed.
"It was not [militants] who imposed a war on the Chechen people. It was the then leadership of Russia that unleashed a war in the Chechen Republic, that failed to take any measures to prevent tragic events in Chechnya and left an enormous amount of weapons and ammunition there," the Interfax news agency quoted Kadyrov as saying.
Yeltsin ordered federal forces into Chechnya in 1994 in a bid to crush its separatist leadership, but they withdrew after a devastating 20-month war, leaving the region with de facto independence. Russian forces entered again in 1999 when Vladimir Putin, now Russia's president, was prime minister.
Large-scale fighting is rare, and Russian authorities say the war is over, but rebels continue to carry out smaller attacks in Chechnya and have been involved in numerous terrorist attacks in recent years in other parts of the volatile North Caucasus and even in Moscow.
Claim decrease in numbers
While violence has increased in other parts of the North Caucasus -- a trend government critics attribute to heavy-handed police activity and religious policy -- Moscow-backed Chechen leaders say rebel numbers in Chechnya are decreasing.
Kadyrov claimed that only about 60 "active [rebel] fighters" and 20-30 foreign mercenaries remain, Russian news agencies reported.
In Ingushetia, just west of Chechnya, two militants were killed in an exchange of gunfire that broke out after they attacked police, regional Interior Ministry spokesman Nazir Yevloyev said. He said they were top militants in Ingushetia and had been involved in a major attack in the region in June 2004.
Like other parts of the poor, ethnically mixed republics of the North Caucasus -- many with large Muslim populations -- Ingushetia has been plagued by attacks targeting law enforcement authorities.
A former senior officer in a police anti-organized crime unit in Ingushetia, Ibragim Barakhoyev, was killed late Monday when gunmen opened fire on his car in Nazran, the region's main city, an Interior Ministry duty officer said.
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