Weekly news wrap

Kazakhstan may erect barriers on part of its Uzbek border to reduce smuggling, the Russian Interfax news agency reported on Wednesday. Kenzhekhan Tulebayev, deputy head of the Southern Kazakhstan region bordering Uzbekistan, said border communities were still not used to the idea that the border is a reality. "However, with the conclusion of the border demarcation, the situation will change. The Uzbek side is already stretching barbed wire across their border. We will do the same," said Tulebayev. In some border settlements frontiers literally pass through villages and even individual properties. Some local residents that straddle the border often use their location as a transit point for the smuggling of goods between the two countries. Poorly defined borders in Central Asia are the legacy of the Soviet Union when they were simply administrative. It was reported on Thursday that Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev told parliament that the country should enact a law against terrorism and religious extremism. Nazarbayev said it was necessary to create an anti-terrorism law as the increasing activities of terrorist and extremist religious organisations had become a growing threat to national security. Kazakhstan would establish a national anti-terrorism system and define the basic obligations and responsibilities of citizens in the fight against terrorism, he added. In order to guarantee national security, the authorities also should revise the laws and regulations that govern and coordinate the activities of religious organisations. In Uzbekistan, the most populous Central Asian state agreed with Afghanistan on Sunday to push ahead with a road-building project intended to make their countries a lucrative trade link between Asia and the Persian Gulf, the AFP reported. "A unique opportunity has appeared for Afghanistan to serve as a transit country between South-East Asia and the Persian Gulf," Afghan foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah said. Meeting in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, Abdullah and his Uzbek counterpart, Sadyk Safayev outlined plans for Uzbek contractors to build a road across northern Afghanistan between the towns of Andhoi and Herat. The eventual aim - agreed last summer at a summit of Afghanistan, Iran and Uzbekistan's presidents - is to extend the road from Uzbekistan southwards through Afghanistan to Iran's Gulf Coast, possibly supplemented by a railway. In Tajikistan, the number of HIV-infected servicemen had increased considerably among the Tajik military over the past two years, the Russian-based Interfax-AVN military news agency reported on Tuesday. "The HIV carrier level among servicemen of the Tajik armed forces has grown more than seven times compared to the total number of registered cases," Gulyam Sufishoyev, chief of the Tajik defence ministry's central military hospital, said. Although there are no exact details on the number of HIV infected people in Tajikistan today, according to the country's Republican AIDS centre, since the first two cases were registered in 1991, 228 people have been officially registered as being infected with the disease, 109 of them in the first four months of 2004 alone. Of this number, 182 are men. But health officials say the real numbers are much higher - between 3,000 and 5,000 - indicating a far more serious problem than generally perceived. And finally, officials in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh may have a solution to the problem of an over abundance of urban monkeys - seen as little more than nuisances who pester passers-by and steal food - export them to Tajikistan, the BBC reported on Thursday. Himachal Pradesh has one of the largest monkey populations in India - nearly a quarter of a million, according to the latest count last year. Now Tajikistan has offered to import monkeys captured by the state's wildlife department in the state capital, Simla, the report added. "The Tajikistan government has sent a letter to the Indian government requesting the import of monkeys," said AK Gulati, the state's wildlife chief. Officials say the Indian monkeys are likely to be housed in zoos and sanctuaries across Tajikistan.