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Uzbek troops reclaim control of volatile border after unrest KARA-SUU, Kyrgyzstan (AFP) -
Uzbek troops reclaimed control over a key town on the volatile Uzbek-Kyrgyz
border and reportedly arrested local Islamist leaders, as the Uzbek government
worked to contain social unrest after a violent military crackdown. "Uzbek border guards have been back since 6:00 am (0100 GMT)," one border guard on the Kyrgyz side of the town told AFP as helicopters circled overhead. Residents from the Uzbek portion of the town, questioned in Kyrgyzstan, said that returning government forces had arrested Bakhtiyar Rakhimov, who is believed to head pro-Islamist forces on the Uzbek side of the town, along with two of his associates. No bloodshed was reported. It was not clear whether Rakhimov had led the protests that erupted on the Uzbek side of the town, known as Karasuv, after the deadly military crackdown in the eastern Uzbek town of Andijan last Friday. Opposition activists have said that up to 745 people had been killed in Andijan after soldiers called to disperse an anti-government rally fired indiscriminatly on the crowd. The government of Uzbekistan's autocratic President Islam Karimov has said 169 people died in what it described as a battle between Islamic radicals bent on overthrowing the government and law enforcement officers. Karimov, a 67-year-old Soviet-era leader who has stamped out opposition in the country of 24 million people, has faced unprecedented international pressure over the violence. On Wednesday, Britain, the European Union and the United Nations called for an international inquiry into the unrest. "I call now for an independent, international enquiry to find out why the killings happened, the full nature of the killings and who was responsible," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said. "The government has one version, the opposition has another. It is of crucial importance for the stability of society in Uzbekistan, as well as for the credibility of the government of Uzbekistan, that we get to the bottom of what happened," Straw said. The United States issued a similar call, though it stopped short of calling for an international investigation. "We certainly do agree that there needs to be a credible and a transparent accounting to establish the facts of the matter of what occurred in Andijan," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington. It was the most pointed criticism from Washington directed at Karimov in years -- the United States considers Uzbekistan a key regional ally in its war on terror and has tempered its criticism of Karimov since he agreed to host a US air base on his soil after the September 11 attacks. The Andijan clashes have also emboldened some Karimov opponents inside Uzbekistan, where public criticism of the president is rare and reports of systematic use of torture in prisons and police stations are widespread among rights groups. On Thursday, a handful of activists demonstrated in front of the Russian embassy in Tashkent, protesting what they said was biased coverage of the Andijan clashes by Russia's state-controlled television. "They are disinforming the world about the events in Andijan," Gavhar Aripova, the head of the Free Women non-governmental organization that organized the protests, told AFP. "There are no Islamists, there are not terrorists there, people rose up there. Not only in Andijan, but throughout the Fergana Valley and elsewhere, they are in poverty and they can wait no longer. This is the breaking point." |
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