The Russian president’s Envoy to the North Caucasus Federal District Alexander Khloponin on Friday called on the leaders of Chechnya and Ingushetia to end their administrative border dispute.
On August 26 Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said that Chechnya is going to ask the federal authorities to demarcate an administrative border between Chechnya and Ingushetia. The latter, he said, is encroaching on Chechen land. A week later Kadyrov said that Chechnya has documents to substantiate its claim for Ingushetia’s Sunzhensky and part of the Malgobek districts.
Ingush leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov replied in his LiveJournal blog that attempts to review the administrative border between the two republics might trigger a conflict.
“I ask you to… stop publicizing this issue, end mutual offenses, stop discussions on this issue once and for all,” Khloponin said. “Stop bickering about it, you are brotherly peoples after all.”
He said the issue should be solved by two working groups that are to determine what documents should become the basis for the administrative border demarcation.
“The land issue is the most acute in the Caucasus, and every wrong step triggers irrevocable consequences that may in fact entail inter-ethnic conflicts,” the presidential envoy said.
The Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Republic, a single administrative entity in the Soviet Union, split in two in December of 1992.