#10 - JRL 2009-153 - JRL Home
Terrorists must be dealt with "unceremoniously" - Medvedev
STAVROPOL. Aug 19 (Interfax) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
has called for terrorists to be dealt with "unceremoniously."
"The crimes that have been committed lately against the Ingush
leadership, individual law enforcement officials, regular citizens, and
human rights activists must entail severe and unavoidable punishment,"
Medvedev said at a conference in Stavropol attended by the Russian
Security Council members, dealing with measures to stabilize the
sociopolitical situation and neutralize terrorist and extremist threats
in the North Caucasus.
"Terrorists must be fought unceremoniously and must be eliminated
without any emotions or hesitation, for otherwise we will not be
successful," Medvedev said addressing the participants in the conference
on Wednesday.
The North Caucasus' security problems are less the result of
external factors than internal ones such as corruption and
socio-economic problems, he said.
"You talked about the influence of a number of factors, including
international ones such as funding of terrorists, religious extremism,
these external factors do exist, you are right," the president said,
commenting on the statements by deputy interior minister Arkady Yedelev.
"But the main cause is inside the country, however sad it sounds,"
the president said.
"The collapse of the country provided favorable conditions for the
rise in crime and religious extremism," he said. "The roots are in the
structure of our life, in unemployment, clans who could not care less
about people and whose only concern is to how to divide the money poured
in here, to get a contract and to settle scores with one another later,
as well as corruption, which has really become very widespread among law
enforcement authorities," the president said.
"Our task is to eradicate these problems," he said. This task "is
very complicated and will take many years," the president said.
"Law enforcement is a very important component here but more so is
the socio-economic factor, but that is a subject of another meeting,"
the president said.
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