Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday...

"You will have federal economic powers as deputy premier and ...a responsibility to tackle personnel, security and other issues [in the North Caucasus] as the envoy," Medvedev told Khloponin, 45.

Medvedev also said he had decided to gather North Caucasus provinces, Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachai-Circassia, into a separate federal district. Parliament is still to approve the creation of the new administrative unit, which Khloponin will oversee.

The appointment of Khloponin suggests the Kremlin is set to change its tactics in tackling the North Caucasus"s economic backwardness, rampant militant violence and clan rivalry, which Medvedev has described as a key national security threat.

So far, most North Caucasus tsars appointed by Moscow have focused on beefing up security measures in the region.

"We don"t need military strategists here," Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who survived a suicide car bomb attack

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