GROZNY. May 20 (Interfax) - Chechnya's ombudsman rapped the commander of Russia's North Caucasus armed forces group for claiming in an interview published on Tuesday that Chechnya's population fails to cooperate with the Russian authorities in fighting Chechen armed separatists.

"The local population either supports bandit groups or takes a neutral attitude to them and fails to counteract them or surrender them to the federal forces," Maj. Gen. Nikolai Sivak told military daily Krasnaya Zvezda.

"Had it not been for this kind of attitude on the part of local civilians, bandit groups would long have been routed," he said.

"The population of the republic is indignant at the general's statements, which are arbitrary and unfounded. I have already had phone calls from dozens of people. Alarm could be traced in what they were saying. They are used to the fact that, after its new round of accusations against the people, the military takes some kind of action that primarily affects the population," ombudsman Nurdi Nukhazhiyev told Interfax.

Sivak forgets Russian law's presumed innocence principle, Nukhazhiyev said.

"He accuses a whole people of unproven crimes by saying the population supports bandit groups. He accuses not individual people, not specific criminals, but the entire population of crimes," the ombudsman said.