Weekly news wrap

An earthquake measuring 3 on the Richter Scale shook the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, on Monday morning, the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency reported. There were no casualties or damage, Dilorom Ergasheva, a duty officer at the Tashkent central seismological station, said. The epicentre of the quake was 210 km to the southeast of the Uzbek capital on Kyrgyz territory. Tamara Chikunova, a prominent local campaigner against the death penalty and prisoner abuse in Uzbekistan, was named the winner of a German human rights prize on Sunday, the AP reported. The city of Nuremberg said it was honouring Chikunova with its International Human Rights Prize (some US $18,600) because she had taken a stand with admirable courage and at great personal risk. Tashkent doesn't publicise figures on executions, but some human rights groups claim the number could be up to 200 every year. On Thursday, the UK Foreign Office withdrew its ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, an outspoken critic of Tashkent's human rights record, the BBC reported. "It's now felt it is no longer possible Mr Murray can do his job effectively so he's been withdrawn," a Foreign Office spokesman said. The announcement followed a recent Financial Times report, in which the former envoy accused British spies of making use of Uzbek intelligence, allegedly extracted under torture. In addition, the Uzbek government rejected claims by Murray, that its security services peddle confessions obtained under torture, Reuters reported, citing a senior Uzbek official said. The Uzbek official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Murray had no proof that Uzbek security forces tortured dissident Muslims in prison. Bishkek and Tashkent resumed border talks in southern Kyrgyzstan on Monday to last until 16 October, the Kyrgyz Fergana.org news agency reported. At present, there are disputed sections of up to 100 km of the 375 km of the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border between the Kyrgyz Batken and the Uzbek Fargona provinces in the densely populated Ferghana Valley shared by Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The population of the valley is some 10 million. In Tajikistan, the European Union (EU) and Dushanbe on Monday signed a wide-ranging bilateral partnership and cooperation deal aimed at fighting drug trafficking, AFP reported. The accord would enable Tajikistan to fight against terrorism and drugs, the EU's external relations commissioner Chris Patten said. The agreement covers other areas too, such as economic relations, financial cooperation and the fight against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The EU has similar accords with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. A project of the International Labor Organization (ILO) on fighting trafficking in human beings and forced labour in Central Asia and Russia is set to be presented in the Tajik capital on Friday, the Tajik Asia Plus news agency reported. Jamshed Quddusov, an ILO project coordinator, said the main emphasis would be made on the issues of labour migration, adding that the project would also include a gender component. "At present, ILO in cooperation with the Tajik Ministry of Education is working out small training programmes aimed at encouraging girls and young women, especially from rural areas, to be economically active", Quddusov said. "It will help curb mass outflow of labour migrants from the republic." Russia will open a new military base in Tajikistan to support ongoing efforts to monitor the border with Afghanistan, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Ivanov said on Thursday, the Russian media reported. His comments came after a recent statement by Moscow announcing a planned withdrawal of its border guards stationed in the country, which are policing the Central Asian country's volatile Afghan border, a frontline for the flow of illicit drugs from Afghanistan to western Europe. The base is expected to open on 17 October. In Kazakhstan, Grigory Marchenko, a key figure behind Kazakhstan's economic reforms, quit his job as an adviser to President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Tuesday after criticising the government and last month's parliamentary elections, Reuters reported. Marchenko, known as Kazakhstan's main reformer, helped set up the national banking system and initiated pension reform at the end of the 1990s. At the start of this year he was appointed first deputy prime minister and given the finance and macroeconomic portfolio. But in April, after only 98 days, he left the job to become a presidential adviser. Kazakhstan has achieved more reforms than its Central Asian neighbours. However, critics say its wealth from oil, gas and metals is not distributed equitably and many Kazakhs still live in poverty.