| The Plenipotentiary Representative of Chechnya admitted that not everyone in the republic is an angel The recently appointed representative of the Chechen Republic to the Russian President, Ziyad Sabsabi, explained to reporters yesterday that the time has come to create a positive image of his republic and its inhabitants. The main component of the positive image, judging by the frequency of mention, should be “the late President Akhmat-Hadji Kadyrov.”
Unfortunately, in addition to the mentioned bright image, there are also militants and kidnappers in the republic. With the militants, everything is simple: according to Mr. Sabsabi, their June raid on Nazran proves their weakness, since it was very fleeting. Kidnappings are more complicated. The plenipotentiary explained that in Chechnya “there are still structures that do not coordinate their actions with the regional operational headquarters for managing the counter-terrorism operation.” These mysterious structures kidnapped about 200 people in the first half of 2004. The “positive” seems to be that this figure is lower than for the same period a year ago. But Mr. Sabsabi himself admitted that the figure is terrible. That is, it is not suitable for a positive image. “We are not against arrests,” the plenipotentiary explained, just in case. “We just want the citizen’s family to know who took him, where and under what article.”
After some hesitation, we managed to find a positive element: it turned out that there was no religious war in Chechnya. “The late president and I traveled a lot around the Middle East, and the Prime Minister of Libya told us that he understood that there is no war against Islam in Chechnya when the former mufti was appointed head of the administration,” said Ziyad Sabsabi.
Upon further communication, it turned out that the Chechens, although religiously tolerant, are extremely demanding. “We no longer feel the need for food and clothing,” said the plenipotentiary. “We are asking for specific objects.” We are talking about objects of the social sphere and the economy. According to Ziyad Sabsabi, the Chechen leadership wants not only Russia, but also Arab countries, and the whole world to do this. By the way, the plenipotentiary did not forget about the agreement on the division of powers between Grozny and Moscow. Its signing, however, was postponed for six months due to the death of Akhamt Kadyrov, but the Chechens already have a project. It talks about “the economic independence of Chechnya and the possible creation of a free economic zone.” “We want to distribute and use our oil and natural resources ourselves,” explained Ziyad Sabsabi. - We also raised questions about collecting all taxes at once only to the local budget. But the Ministry of Finance explained to us that there are technical problems.”
As for the “technical problems” discovered by the Chechen prosecutor’s office in terms of spending federal money (the Vremya Novostei newspaper wrote yesterday about 25 criminal cases opened over the past six months), the plenipotentiary representative is not worried about his image: “25 cases is not that big of a deal.” a big figure for the republic. There are no violations on our part, because we could not be either customers or contractors. To accuse us of stealing something somewhere is dishonest and unfair.” In response, journalists named Mr. Sabsabi several specific cases brought against Chechen leaders and contractors. Then the plenipotentiary remarked philosophically: “I can’t say that we are all angels.” Ivan SUKHOV |
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