Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov dismissed...

"I"m convinced that none of the North Caucasus peoples has even the slightest [separatist] idea," he said in an interview to be published on Friday in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta government daily.

He said that some forces were still seeking to destabilize the situation in the North Caucasus, knowing its strategic and political importance for Russia.

Chechnya has seen a dramatic surge in violence recently, undermining efforts to bring life back to normal in the region after two brutal separatist wars in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The Chechen leader said, however, that information from many independent sources "gives us grounds to think that there are only several dozens of militants active on the Chechen territory."

"Small militant groups are still hiding in forests. We would have dealt with them long ago if not for the support they get from abroad. Now they can hardly be useful to foreign special services, so the financial support is shrinking. So, the

Pages: [1] 2 3