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The acting president of Chechnya was seriously ill in hospital on Sunday, officials said, victim of an attempt to poison him a week before an election critical to Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin's peace plan for the region.

File picture shows Prime Minister of Chechnya Anatoly Popov.   [AP]

Anatoly Popov, who was appointed prime minister of Chechnya earlier this year, was taken to hospital on Saturday evening after officially opening a gas pipeline. Officials said his life was not in danger although doctors evacuated him to Moscow.

He served under the head of the region's pro-Moscow local administration, Akhmad Kadyrov, and took over as acting president during the campaign for the October 5 presidential poll. Kadyrov is heavy favorite after his main rivals in the contest either withdrew or were disqualified.

"The diagnosis is poisoning by a substance of unknown origin," the Chechen government's press service said of Popov, who is not running in the election.

"His condition is serious, but stable. He is currently being evacuated to Moscow...The doctors say he will be ill for a couple of days, and that his life is not in danger."

It was unclear who might have poisoned Popov and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The election is a key part of Putin's plan to entrench Chechnya within Russia, end a decade of violence and discredit the separatists who ran the region for three years until Moscow dispatched tens of thousands of troops to the region in 1999.

Although Moscow says it now controls Chechnya, armed rebels subject Russian forces to daily attacks, reject the poll as meaningless and have pledged to disrupt it.

NO TALKS WITH SEPARATISTS

The Kremlin has rejected separatists' calls for talks, including those of Aslan Maskhadov, elected president in 1997 when Chechnya had de facto independence, but in hiding since Russian troops retook the regional capital Grozny in 1999.

Putin, speaking last week in the United States, said next Sunday's election would "once and for all give substance to legal affairs in the republic, giving a president elected by the people authority in law enforcement."

"We are therefore obliged to ensure that a president is elected there and that is what we are doing."

But many observers and politicians have dismissed the election as pointless after it was all but turned into a one-horse race.

Although seven candidates remain in the running no one is given any real chance of defeating Kadyrov, appointed by Putin to head the local pro-Moscow administration in 2000.

Two challengers once viewed as a serious electoral threat to him were declared out of the race earlier this month. One, a prominent businessman, was disqualified on a technicality, the other, Chechnya's local member of the Russian national parliament, was given a Kremlin job as an adviser.

The Kremlin -- and state television -- try to portray life in Chechnya as returning to normal, but Grozny is still largely in ruins and violence remains endemic.

A total of 111 police have died in rebel attacks this year, according to government figures.

More than 150 people have been killed since April in suicide bombings, the tactic now preferred by the most extreme of separatists, though denounced by ex-president Maskhadov and other insurgents as unjustified.

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