"I think that the draft treaty, on having been coordinated with the Russian president's plenipotentiary in the Southern federal district, will be submitted for Moscow's ultimate approval and signing."
He added that it was premature to talk about the time of signing since that was the business of the federal centre's rather than that of the Chechen leadership.
Dealing with Chechnya's economic development, Alkhanov referred to his recent visit to Moscow where the issue was high on the agenda. In particular, he had suggested that taxes collected in Chechnya as well as returns on Chechen oil sales should be left in the republic.
Alkhanov also touched upon elections to the Chechen parliament. "When meeting in Moscow with the central electoral commission's chairman Alexander Veshnyakov, we shared the opinion that polls could be held when conditions were ripe, that is about October 2005," said the Chechen president.
Alkhanov reported that the 2005 budget of the Chechen republic would be enlarged by 1.4 billion roubles (about $48 million), this provision having been agreed upon during his Moscow meeting last week with Russian Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin. Other government officials he conferred with in Moscow were Agriculture Minister Alexey Gordeev and Railways boss Gennady Fadeev. They discussed agricultural revival and railway traffic resumption in Chechnya as well as plans for the reconstruction of the carriage repair works in Grozny to create thousands of jobs.
