Weekly news wrap

This week in Central Asia, Russian President Vladimir Putin formally opened a new Russian military base in Tajikistan, reasserting Moscow’s influence in the former Soviet republic, local media reported. Putin reportedly said that the base, along with the Russian air base in Kyrgyzstan established a year ago, would operate to strengthen security in the region, a move welcomed by US Ambassador to Dushanbe, Richard Hoagland. The agreement inked by Putin and his Tajik counterpart Imomali Rahmonov on 18 October established procedures for transferring certain sections of the country's Afghan border, currently protected by the Russian border guards. The Tajik Asia-Plus news agency reported on Tuesday that the Tajik border guards would take over the sections controlled by the Ishkoshim border detachment and then the sections controlled by the Khorugh and Qala-i Khumb border detachments in eastern Tajikistan. The UN Tajikistan Office of Peace-Building (UNTOP) reported that the training of 200 local observers was underway aimed at ensuring peaceful and conflict-free parliamentary elections in the country scheduled for February. The UN agency conducted a three-day seminar for dozens of Tajik residents from different backgrounds. In Uzbekistan, the first independent socio-political media outlet in English - the Tashkent Post weekly - was released on Wednesday. The newspaper is mainly targeting foreign diplomatic missions and the English speaking community, the Uzbek media reported. The weekly is set to be published on Mondays. The Uzbek Central Electoral Commission (CEC) on Thursday allowed three parties to run in the elections scheduled for 26 December. The parties allowed so far are the ruling People’s Democratic Party, Fidokorlar National Democratic Party and Liberal Democratic Party. Meanwhile, Uzbek-Kyrgyz border talks are proceeding with slow pace and the meeting held in Pulgon village of the southern Kadamkjay district ended with delineation of some 870 metres of the Kyrgyz-Uzbek around the Sokh enclave, an insignificant result, according to the Kyrgyz side. The Kyrgyz Fergana.org news agency reported that talks on the remaining 375 km of the border were expected to continue in November. In Kazakhstan, Zharmakhan Tuyakbay, a parliamentary speaker and member of President Nazarbayev’s Otan party, resigned on Monday, protesting the parliamentary elections held in September, which he said were fraudulent, the Kazakh media reported. “Since the new Mazhilis [lower chamber of the Kazakh parliament] has been elected in violation of the law, I do not consider it possible to participate in its work,” Tuyakbay said. According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Kazakh elections fell short of international standards.