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Kyrgyz minister says ready to use armed force
Kyrgyz police violently broke up a protest in the capital on Wednesday and the hard-line new security chief told opponents of President Askar Akayev he was ready to use armed force to crush unrest.
Akayev, who has promised not to use extreme force against demonstrators, named a top policeman as interior minister to deal with protests to demand he step down and which some warn could push the Central Asian country in civil war.
In his first public comments on becoming minister, Keneshbek Dushebayev made clear security forces were ready to get tough.
Shortly before he spoke, riot police moved in and broke up an anti-Akayev demonstration of about 200 people in the capital.
"Akayev is strengthening his grip on power by putting hard-liners in these posts," said Edil Baisalov, who heads the independent Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society.
Reuters correspondent Dmitry Solovyov said police beat demonstrators and drove several away in buses. "It was very brief and very violent," he said.
The opposition, which has taken control of two major towns in Kyrgyzstan's poor south where there were bloody ethnic clashes in the dying days of Soviet rule, criticized Akayev's latest cabinet changes.
"(They) are the last breath of the Akayev regime ... They could spill blood and at the cost of spilled blood save Akayev's regime."
Analysts warned the violence could spiral out of control in Kyrgyzstan which borders China and lies in an energy-rich region where Washington and Moscow vie for influence. Both powers have military bases outside the capital.
A government spokesman in the capital said Prime Minister Nikolai Tanayev might travel south to Kyrgyzstan's second city, Osh, on Thursday to meet opposition protesters.
In a bid to improve his image in the predominantly agricultural South, Akayev met a group of peasants and promised that the newly elected parliament would address their problems.
"I will offer to the new parliament a package of bills aimed at developing the agricultural sector," he told a group of peasants invited to the government headquarters in Bishkek.
OPPOSITION RALLY
About 1,000 protesters including women in colorful headscarves and men in white felt conical hats gathered outside the main administrative building in Jalal Abad, which the opposition took over at the weekend, shouting: "Akayev go!."
"Everyone you see here is unemployed. Try to find anyone who has enough flour or bread. Since 1991 we have become slaves for Akayev," said unemployed Anvar Razulov, 54, an ethnic Uzbek.
Akayev, in power for 14 years, has rejected opposition demands he step down and annul parliamentary elections held in February and March. The opposition said the polls, in which it was badly defeated, were rigged. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said the polls were flawed. Marcus Muller, OSCE ambassador to Bishkek, told Reuters the OSCE would send a mediator and foreign ambassadors had pressed the two sides to hold talks. Akayev says he is ready for dialogue. The authoritarian government in Uzbekistan has been watching with concern the chaos in its impoverished neighbor, which has a large ethnic Uzbek minority. It has blamed foreign forces for provoking the unrest. The people power revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine in the past two years have unnerved the autocratic governments that dominate the five Central Asian countries which were also once under Moscow rule during the Soviet era. Kyrgyzstan is seen as the most liberal of the five. |
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