Chechnya will count its war damage from 1994

A Commission of the Chechen Parliament has begun its work to calculate the whole damage caused to the Republic starting from 1994 - opening of the operation to set up the constitutional order.

Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, Chairman of the Popular Assembly of the Chechen Republic, told the "Interfax" that "the Popular Assembly had approved a Commission entrusted to make a calculation of the total damage caused to the economy, flora and fauna, and social sphere of Chechnya, and also to sum up all the casualties."

Mr. Abdurakhmanov has stressed that "there is no political background in this decision."

He also noted that "the lack of officially confirmed data about the damage gives grounds to various forces to speculate on this topic," the NEWSru.com writes. "Some people say that the damage is worth 600 billion roubles, others count in trillions, but both sources cannot be treated seriously until the damage has been calculated by specialists," Abdurakhmanov said.

Adnan Temishev, deputy head of the Commission and chairman of the Committee of the Popular Assembly of Chechnya for Economic Policy, told the "Commersant" that the compensation sums for loss of housing and property now paid out to Chechnya residents (350,000 roubles) will not be taken into account.

Deputy Temishev has confessed that by trying to define the real damage the local authorities have also quite a practical task in mind: "Of course, we understand that nobody will ever give us trillions of roubles, however, we don't need so much. But we don't find it possible to agree to the current level of funding," the deputy said. He has reminded that the current budget of the Republic "is only 26 billion roubles," and complained that the neighbouring Republics are funded better than Chechnya.