FRESH TENSIONS BETWEEN INGUSH AND OSSETIANS.

A commission headed by Russia’s Deputy Interior Minister Petr Latyshev has begun an investigation into last weekend’s murder of six policemen near the village of Maisky in North Ossetia’s Prigorodny District. The murdered policemen were manning a joint Ingush-Ossetian checkpoint near the border between Ingushetia and North Ossetia. There are fears that the killings will inflame fresh hostility between Ossetians and Ingush in the disputed Prigorodny territory, scene of deadly clashes between the two ethnic groups in 1992. In the past couple of years, Ingush refugees have been gradually returning to the region but have met bitter hostility from local Ossetians. Over the weekend, a trailer camp consisting of some sixty makeshift Ingush homes was burned down, allegedly by Ossetians. The Ingush who were living in the camp have fled back to Ingushetia (Itar-Tass, September 12 and 13).

POLITICAL FRONTS HARDEN IN BELARUS.