Weekly news wrap

The World Bank said on Wednesday it had approved a US $6.9 million grant to Kyrgyzstan in support of a disaster hazard mitigation project. The project aims at minimising the exposure of humans and livestock to nuclear waste associated with abandoned uranium waste dumps in the southern Mailuu-Suu area and improve response by national and regional authorities and local communities to disasters. Uranium waste dumps in the area are vulnerable to landslides and floods, posing a potential threat to the densely populated Ferghana Valley, shared by Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and a home to some 10 million people. Kyrgyzstan joined the World Bank in 1992. Since then, the Bank’s commitments to the country have exceeded $649 million. The World Bank also approved $19.79 million worth of assistance for community agriculture and watershed management development in Tajikistan. The project will help rural communities raise agricultural productivity and prime the rural economy while curtailing degradation of fragile areas, the bank said. The project is set to protect globally significant mountain ecosystems by mainstreaming sustainable land use and biodiversity conservation within agricultural and rural investment decisions. Kyrgyzstan has approved plans for a $900 million rail link intended to revive Central Asia's historic role as an East-West trade route, Kyrgyz Deputy Prime Minister Kubanychbek Jumaliyev said on Wednesday. The line would link to existing Chinese rail routes from the Pacific and would run from China's western city of Kashgar across the Tien Shan mountains and into the country via the Torugart Pass, from where it would head on to the Uzbek border town of Andijan. With finance and expertise expected from China, the European Union (EU), Germany, Iran and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Kyrgyz link could be completed by the end of next year, Jumaliyev said, adding that the country expected to get $250 million annually from the line. The US State Department on Monday announced the list of countries who failed to adequately fight international human trafficking, but removed five countries, including Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, on the blacklist last year. For the first time in its four-year history, the 2004 report created a "Tier 2 watch list" for countries which are not yet in compliance with US legal standards and may be downgraded, but have promised to make, or are in the process of making, significant efforts to meet the requirements. Kazakhstan and Tajikistan are listed in the Tier 2 watch list. In Tajikistan, the country's parliament approved on Wednesday changes to the election code. The AP reported that the amendments to the code, valid for five years, will be key in shaping the outcome of parliamentary elections in February 2005 and presidential elections in 2006. The new changes contain measures to prevent government interference in elections and ban the presence of armed supporters at polling places. However, some opposition parties said that the law still had shortcomings, the Tajik Asia-Plus news agency reported. "We are in particular not happy with the fact that representatives of political parties will not be allowed into polling stations," the leader of the Democratic Party of Tajikistan, Mahmadruzi Iskandarov, said. The deputy leader of the Social Democratic Party of Tajikistan, Shokirjon Hakimov, noted that their party was also unhappy with the fact that such important issues as specifying the status of independent local observers and their rights and commitments were also ignored. In Kazakhstan, a total of 21 new AIDS cases have been registered over the first four months of 2004, more than double compared to the first four months of 2003, the Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency reported on Monday, citing the State Statistics Agency. The official total number of HIV-positive people in the country fuelled mainly by injecting drug use was 4,230 by mid-May. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced on Tuesday that parliamentary elections would be held on 19 September, warning opponents to follow his lead or risk destabilising the former Soviet state, Reuters reported. There is only one opposition group among the 10 parties registered for the vote - the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan, whose leader Galymzhan Zhakiyanov is in jail. Nazarbayev's office is suing a leading opposition newspaper, Assandi-Times, for alleged slander, the AP reported on Tuesday. The lawsuit against the newspaper was filed last week after the paper accused Nazarbayev's administration of being responsible for a fake edition of the paper printed on 2 June that reported that political opposition leaders intended to resign. Urazov said the president's office has asked a court to order Assandi-Times to publish a retraction and pay damages worth some $730,000. Assandi-Times deputy editor Galina Dyrdina said the legal action was an attempt to silence the newspaper ahead of the parliamentary elections in September. In Turkmenistan, the visiting envoy for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Martti Ahtisaari, praised the Turkmen government for increasing its contacts with international organisations. "I am very pleased to note that the [Turkmen] government's cooperation with international organisations is expanding,'' Ahtisaari was quoted by Turkmen state media on Tuesday. He praised the Turkmen government for allowing organisations such as the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) to work in the region's most reclusive country.