The NGO Cherkess Congress has released a statement condemning the publication in the 18-24 February issue of \"Komsomolskaya pravda\" of the findings of an opinion poll asking residents of Krasnodar Krai and the Republic of Adygeya how they would vote in a referendum on merging those two Russian entities. The Cherkess Congress statement criticized the poll as \"destructive\" and likely to exacerbate interethnic tensions in Adygeya, where Cherkess make up some 24 percent of the population, and it rejected the argument that it is economically expedient to subsume \"impoverished\" Adygeya into \"wealthy\" Krasnodar. It also noted that Krasnodar Krai Governor Aleksandr Tkachev has made discriminatory statements about some of the ethnic groups in the planned megaregion, and that the Krasnodar authorities have a record of oppressing minorities, including Armenians and Meskhetians. The statement further warned that there are 300,000 Cherkess in the North Caucasus and some 3 million dispersed across Eurasia who, the statement claimed, have the right to demand their own republic in the North Caucasus. (RFE/RL)