  The implications of gauging the Wess-Zumino-Novikov-Witten (WZNW) model using
the Gauss decomposition of the group elements are explored. We show that,
contrary to standard gauging of WZNW models, this gauging is carried out by
minimally coupling the gauge fields. We find that this gauging, in the case of
gauging an abelian vector subgroup, differs from the standard one by terms
proportional to the field strength of the gauge fields. We prove that gauging
an abelian vector subgroup does not have a nonlinear sigma model
interpretation. This is because the target-space metric resulting from the
integration over the gauge fields is degenerate. We demonstrate, however, that
this kind of gauging has a natural interpretation in terms of Wakimoto
variables.
