Voters in Russia's war-torn republic of Chechnya in the northern Caucasus began on Sunday to vote in a presidential election.

The vote at the 426 polling stations across Chechnya started at 08:00 Moscow time (0400) GMT and will last till 20:00 (1600 GMT), Itar-Tass reported, citing the Chechen Electoral Committee.

The vote will be considered valid if 30 percent of 561,817 registered voters cast ballots, said the committee, noting that a candidate who will gain 50 percent of the votes plus one will become Chechnya's president for the next four years.

Some 30,000 Russian servicemen permanently stationed in the region have the right to vote. Some 3,000 Chechens, who temporarily living in the neighboring republics, including Ingushetia, Dagestan, will also take part in the vote.

Seven candidates, including Akhmat Kadyrov, who is the current head of Chechen civil administration and the Kremlin's favorite, are running for the top post of Chechnya.

The preliminary results of the vote will be known on Monday while the official results will be made public on Wednesday.

Chechen Prime Minister Anatoly Popov said that the situation in Chechnya had been calm in the night before the election, adding no sizable incidents had been registered.

"People go for polls consciously, because they understand that today they are voting for their guarantor of stability, because the republic more than anything now needs stability, which is the basis for economic revival and the further restoration of the republic," Ponov was quoted by Itar-Tass as saying.

Some 15,000 servicemen are being mobilized to ensure security and public order during the voting day, Chechen Interior Minister Alu Alkhanov said.

To prevent terrorist attacks, the movement of all trucks throughout Chechnya is being tightly restricted until Oct. 6, according Chechen officials.

In the meantime, security measures have been stepped up in trains heading for the Chechen capital of Grozny ahead of the vote, sources from the Russian Railway Ministry told Itar-Tass on Saturday.

The international observers from the Islamic Conference, the Arab League and Commonwealth of Independent States were to monitor the election.

However, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Pace) and the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) recently announced that none of their observers would monitor the presidential election in Chechnya, taking into account of the ceaseless chaos and the battles there.

"The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the PACE and several American organizations declined Russia's invitation for security reasons," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said on Saturday.

Yakovenko noted that Russia has no international obligations to invite observers to supervise the election.

The Oct. 5 presidential election came following a March referendum in which Chechens approved a Kremlin-backed constitution that cemented the region's status as part of Russia.

In 1996, Russian troops were pulled out troops from the republic sent back to the lawless region in September 1999 following attacks by Chechen-based fighters in a neighboring region and a series of deadly bombings blamed on the rebels.
 
(Xinhua News Agency October 5, 2003)