Russia for tough action against ‘Caucasus bandits’

* Russian president rebuffs criticism of democracy 
* Says political reform must be gradual 
* Militant leader calls for more attacks outside Caucasus

YAROSLAVL: President Dmitry Medvedev demanded tough action against militants on Friday after a suicide bombing killed at least 18 people, and an insurgent leader called for more attacks outside Russia’s Muslim regions. 

The remarks from Medvedev and Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov, who spoke in a web-posted video, underscored the confrontation between the Kremlin and Islamist insurgents who say they are determined to bring Russia down. 

"There should be no ceremony with the bandits: they should be destroyed,” Medvedev told Russian and foreign political analysts at a forum in the city of Yaroslavl. 

He also said that Russia’s democratic institutions were not perfect but political reform must be gradual to preserve stability. 

"We have a very young democracy, an imperfect democracy — we speak openly about this,” Medvedev said. "As to our current political model, changes can only be cautious, step by step, so that stability is not destroyed,” he added.

But in contrast to former President Vladimir Putin who said the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union was greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, Medvedev said it was a tragedy for many but that there had been no alternative at the time. 

"The collapse of the Soviet Union was really a major ordeal for the people and for many it was a tragedy, but I don’t think we had any alternative development scenario,” Medvedev said. 

Medvedev spoke as mourners in North Ossetia left flowers near police barriers at the gates of a busy market in the provincial capital, Vladikavkaz, where authorities say an attacker set off a powerful bomb packed with bolts and ball bearings on Thursday. 

An injured victim died in hospital overnight, a regional Health Ministry official said, bringing the death toll to 18 including the suspected attacker. More than 100 people remained hospitalised, including 11 who were flown to Moscow. 

The blast was a new blow to the Kremlin, which is struggling to contain a growing Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus, a strip of impoverished, ethnically mixed provinces along predominantly Orthodox Christian Russia’s southern border. 

Insurgent leader Umarov issued a new call for attacks outside the North Caucasus. 

Umarov, filmed sitting on the ground in an unspecified location and wearing camouflage, urged militants to focus on "taking jihad beyond the boundaries of the Caucasus” and other Muslim regions in order to "batter Russia in its den”. 

The video on www.kavkazcenter.com was dated September 2010 and cast as a Ramazan message to militants in the heavily Muslim Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, east of Moscow in central Russia, where there has been very little violence linked to Islam. 

Umarov has repeatedly vowed to carry out attacks in Russia’s heartland. He claimed responsibility for twin suicide bombings that killed 40 people on Moscow’s metro in March, which Russian authorities also blamed on the Caucasus-based militants. 

The militants, whose campaign against Russian authorities stems from the post-Soviet wars between federal forces and Chechen separatists, have struck outside Muslim areas several times. 

The Kremlin has been unable to curb the insurgency in the Caucasus a decade after federal forces drove separatists from power in Chechnya in a war launched by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. 

Rights groups say the poverty, corruption and abusive conduct by government forces in the North Caucasus stokes anger at the authorities and fuels the insurgency. agencies

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