CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

ANKARA, 3 Mar 2006 (IRIN) - About 1,000 demonstrators defied truncheon-wielding riot police on Sunday in Kazakhstan's largest city Almaty, pushing ahead with a banned march to commemorate slain opposition leader Altynbek Sarsenbayev, who was abducted and killed along with his driver and bodyguard earlier in February, AP reported.

Sarsenbayev's supporters have called his murder a politically motivated killing. Their bodies were found in the mountains near Almaty, their hands tied and their bodies riddled with bullets. The government has arrested five security service officers and the head of the Senate administration as suspects, but insists the murder was business related.

Kazakhstan's interior minister said on Monday that the murder was masterminded by a senior parliament official because of "personal enmity". Interior Minister Baurzhan Mukhamedzhanov said that Erzhan Utembayev, the Senate administration chief, who was arrested last week, confessed that he had ordered the killing because of "long-standing personal enmity" toward Sarsenbayev.

A day later the Kazakh opposition dismissed the authorities' conclusion that the killing had been masterminded by a parliamentary official. It demanded the creation of a state commission to investigate the death.

"We insist that Utembayev is not a man who has the personal and professional qualities to be able independently and on his own to decide, plan, organise and carry out such a monstrous and unprecedented crime," the 'For a Fair Kazakhstan' opposition alliance said in a statement.

Also on Tuesday, a court in Almaty sentenced six opposition leaders to between five and 15 days in jail and fined five more for staging the unauthorised rally on Sunday in memory of Sarsenbayev, according to AP.

The United States on Wednesday condemned the killing as "a serious crime" but pleaded for calm amid protests over the killing.

"The murder of an opposition politician is a serious crime," said US State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli. "We think, based on our dealings and conversations with the government of Kazakhstan that they recognise that."

The World Bank will allocate a US $19 million grant for the improvement of Kyrgyzstan's irrigation system. The project is also supported by the Japanese government to the tune of $4.4 million, Kazakhstan Today news website reported on Wednesday, citing the Kyrgyz Ministry of Economy and Finance.

The main purpose of the project is to improve irrigation systems in order to boost the productivity of irrigated agriculture. The ministry of agriculture and water will manage the project that will be rolled out across Kyrgyzstan. The World Bank is the biggest donor operating in the irrigation sector in the country.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Secretary-General Marc Perrin de Brichambaut arrived in Kyrgyzstan on Friday for a three-day visit, the Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry news department reported. The OSCE will have meetings with Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and Foreign Minister Alikbek Jekshenkulov. He is also expected to have an introductory meeting with the newly-elected Kyrgyz parliament speaker, Marat Sultanov.

Afghanistan on Tuesday inked pacts with three of its neighbours to bolster border security at a conference in Qatar amid warnings of growing links between insurgents and the region's drug trade, AFP reported.

"There have been three agreements signed between Afghanistan on one side, and Iran, Pakistan and China on the other side, that means three of the major neighbours," Tom Koenigs, who heads the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), told the news agency.

"They have agreed to facilitate better border management and those present from the international community have agreed to support this effort through special projects. The idea is to facilitate trade and prevent crime and illegal border crossings of goods or persons."

He spoke at the end of a two-day conference on Afghanistan border security in Doha in which 22 countries participated, including the country's six neighbours.

The US State Department condemned on Tuesday Ukrainian authorities' forcible return of 10 Uzbek asylum seekers to their homeland two weeks ago, AP reported. "These individuals apparently were returned to Uzbekistan without passing through the full asylum application process under Ukrainian law, including the ability to appeal their asylum determinations," deputy spokesman Ereli said.

He said Ukrainian authorities also ignored a request by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for official guarantees not to return forcibly any of the 10 until after proper Ukrainian asylum application procedures had been followed.

On the same day, Ukraine defended its deportation of the Uzbeks, saying the deportees had belonged to a banned Islamist organisation. "The Uzbek citizens in question were associated with an organisation that has been recognised as a terrorist one by the United Nations, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)," a spokeswoman for Ukraine's SBU intelligence service, said in televised comments.

The comments marked the first time that the SBU, which oversees illegal migration, had mentioned membership in the Islamist group as the reason for the 14 February deportation of 10 Uzbeks from Crimea. Previously, Kiev had said that the men were sent back because their asylum applications had been rejected by a local court and they had declined an appeal.

[ENDS]