Nuncio says poverty, resources, instability make Caucasus volatile

Published: 2004-09-15

ROME (CNS) -- The poverty, political instability and major energy resources found in the Caucasus region have combined to make it a potential "powder keg" for violence on an international scale, said the nuncio to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Ethnic and religious differences, independence movements and the fight for territorial control have sparked "a confrontation without limits and without morality," said Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, the nuncio. An interview the archbishop gave to a Catholic newspaper in Trent, Italy, was republished in early September by SIR, the news agency of the Italian bishops' conference. He spoke after the deaths of more than 300 children and adults in a school in Beslan in Russia's North Ossetia province. The main suspects were from the neighboring province of Chechnya, where battles have raged in a fight for independence from Russia.

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