Russian resistance leader Abd Al-Halim Sadulayev appeared in a videotape obtained by the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera news channel on Sunday, dismissing the polls as a "farce."

"This is not the first time Russia has carried out this sarcastic play on Chechen lands," Reuters quoted him as saying.

"This is not the first time Russia has carried out this sarcastic play on Chechen lands," he said, adding that "We know how their democratic elections were carried out before, when they appointed Kadyrov as the first Chechen President ... as if no elections had previously been carried out and Chechnya had no President before."

He went on: "They [Russians] attempt to add new points to the Chechen constitution, stating that the Chechen Republic wants to be a part of the federal Russia.

"Of course, this has not been mentioned in the previous constitution. The Russians have invented this idea."

Sadulayev said President Alkhanov had been appointed "to serve their (Russia's) personal interests"

Chechen fighters further call Kadyrov a Russian stooge and say the poll will do nothing to persuade them to disarm.

"The upcoming elections have nothing in common with a real political process. All it does is push further away the day when there will be a real political solution, and lead to the expansion of the theatre of war," Akhmed Zakayev, resistance envoy abroad, told a London conference on the eve of the poll.

"The responsibility for the consequences lies with the Russian government."

International and Russian human rights groups have shown less enthusiasm, describing the vote as a "simulacrum of a political process."

Throughout the province, residents said they were less interested in who won the elections than in seeing the process lead to better security and more economic opportunity.

"If the deputies are going to work, something will change," Akhmed Gilihanov, a farmer in the western Chechen village of Bratskoye, told AFP.

"The most important thing is for people to have work and for the banditism to end. I want people to live like they do elsewhere in Russia."

Iesa Gantukayeva, a 34-year-old housewife in the village, was also cautiously optimistic about the vote.

"We hope things will get better" after the election, she said. "We want people to live in peace."

Russian troops entered Chechnya in October 1999 to try to re-establish control following defeat in a first war against Chechen fighters in 1994-96.

Although major clashes have become rare, Russian forces and their Chechen allies continue to suffer casualties almost on a daily basis.

Some officials have put the number of dead for the 11-year war, including civilians, as high as 160,000.

Russia does not publish a death toll, but observers say the war may have cost as many as 20,000 soldiers' lives.