President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday appointed...

"You will have federal economic powers as deputy premier and ...responsibility to tackle personnel, security and other issues as the envoy," Medvedev told Alexander Khloponin on Tuesday.

Medvedev also said he has decided to single out North Caucasus provinces, including 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 to oversee the North Caucasus suggests the Kremlin is set to change its tactic in tackling the region"s economic backwardness, rampant militant violence and clan rivalry, which Medvedev has described as a key national security threat.

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

"We don"t need military strategists here," Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov said commenting

Pages: [1] 2