Rock Festival In Chechnya Postponed

4 July 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Chechnya's pro-Russian government has postponed a rock concert planned in the southern Russian republic because police cannot guarantee security at the event.

A Chechen government spokesman today said no new date has been set for the concert that had been planned to take place on 5 July in Gudermes.

The concert -- dubbed "Phoenix: Rebirth" -- was to feature eight Russian rock groups. Some 9,000 tickets had been distributed to young Chechens free of charge.

Separatists and Islamic militants have been fighting Russian and pro-Russian local forces in Chechnya for more than five years, the second such war in the republic in less than a decade.

(ITAR-TASS/AFP)

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