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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Karimov sez he'll show terrorists to the world once opposition is crushed |
| 2005-06-06 |
| By officially denying Michael Matthiessen, the director for civilian crisis management under Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the Uzbek authorities appear to be taking extra time to eliminate the opposition completely, the Gazeta daily said Monday. "They will show Islamic terrorists to international representatives when the real opposition has been destroyed," Alexei Malashenko, an expert with the Carnegie Moscow Center, said. "Well aware that they are dealing with an Islamic state, Westerners appear ready to grant abatements to president Islam Karimov." The refusal to let Matthiessen into Uzbekistan marked a new stage of the escalating conflict between the Central Asian republic and the West. Late last month, EU foreign ministers threatened to exert "diplomatic pressure" on Uzbekistan if it failed to let international organizations investigate the crackdown on the mid-May riots in Andizhan, a city with 300,000 population (second largest in the eastern part of the country). Russia promptly called for a UN investigation. Late last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested Chechen terrorists might have been involved in the Andizhan unrest. "The Taliban or Chechen terrorists could have played a role [in the Andizhan riots]. Now we are verifying this information," he said. Interestingly, one of the first comments on Lavrov's remarks came from Taus Dzhabrailov, chairman of Chechnya's State Council, airing what Moscow's officials would have probably preferred to downplay: "Chechen militants, if they were among those who orchestrated the Uzbek events, prove that the structures designed to fight them are too weak." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |