Akhmad Kadyrov was established in office on Sunday as president of the war-wracked Russian republic of Chechnya, two weeks after winning an election that the Kremlin promoted as a significant step toward stability but that critics called a sham. In a reflection of the violence that continues in Chechnya, the location of the inauguration was not made public ahead of time due to concerns that rebels might try to attack the ceremony. The inauguration took place at the local administration headquarters in Gudermes, Chechnya's second-largest city. The Kremlin appointed Kadyrov as Chechnya's top civilian official in 2000. Kadyrov, an Islamic cleric, had supported separatist rebels during the 1994-96 war, but he split with the separatists after Chechnya-based insurgents mounted an incursion into neighboring Dagestan in 1999, one of the events that touched off the second war.

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