MOSCOW, Jan 8 (AFP) - Russia's interim President Vladimir Putin said Saturday he was counting on Russia's Muslim religious leaders to help restore order in the republic of Chechnya and the surrounding region.
In a message issued to coincide with the end of the holy month of Ramadan, Putin said he wanted them to do their part to get life back to normal in the northern Caucasus.
He said he hoped the Muslim religious establishment would do their bit to "safeguard peace and religious tolerance in the country. And of course in the re-establishment of order and a normal life in the northern Caucasus," he added.
Russia has 19 million Muslims among its 147 million people.
Russia's Muslim religious leaders have not spoken out against the military offensive against Chechnya, a predominantly Muslim republic. Several of the Chechen leaders are Islamists.
Last July, before the crisis began, Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov's government banned the Islamists, accusing them of trying to import an alien ideology into Chechnya from Arab countries.
Since then however, Chechnya's mufti, Ahmad Khadja Kadyrov, has been disowned by the Chechen authorities and threatened with punishment after he made contact with Moscow.
In December the "mufti" denounced Maskhadov as a puppet of Chechen jihad leader Shamil Basayev, whom Russia blames for the wave of bomb attacks on Russian apartment buildings that killed nearly 300 people last August and September.
Moscow has also accused another Muslim warrior known only as Khattab, who is of Saudi origin.
