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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has called for terrorists to be dealt with "unceremoniously."

"The crimes that have been committed lately against the Ingush leadership, individual law enforcement officials, regular citizens, and human rights activists must entail severe and unavoidable punishment," Medvedev said at a conference in Stavropol attended by the Russian Security Council members, dealing with measures to stabilize the sociopolitical situation and neutralize terrorist and extremist threats in the North Caucasus.

"Terrorists must be fought unceremoniously and must be eliminated without any emotions or hesitation, for otherwise we will not be successful," Medvedev said addressing the participants in the conference on Wednesday.

The North Caucasus' security problems are less the result of external  factors  than  internal  ones  such  as corruption and socio-economic problems, he said.

"You talked about the influence of a number of factors, including international ones such as funding of terrorists, religious extremism, these external factors do exist, you are right," the president said, commenting on the statements by deputy interior minister Arkady Yedelev.

"But the main cause is inside the country, however sad it sounds," the president said.

"The collapse of the country provided favorable conditions for the rise in crime and religious extremism," he said. "The roots are in the structure of our life, in unemployment, clans who could not care less about people and whose only concern is to how to divide the money poured in here, to get a contract and to settle scores with one another later, as well as corruption, which has really become very widespread among law enforcement authorities," the president said.

"Our task is to eradicate these problems," he said. This task "is very complicated and will take many years," the president said.

"Law enforcement is a very important component here but more so is the socio-economic factor, but that is a subject of another meeting," the president said.

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