Weekly news wrap

Over 4,500 people were registered as HIV-positive as of 1 October in Kazakhstan, of whom 206 had already developed AIDS, the Chinese Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday. Zamzagul Zhamagulova, a senior epidemiologist of the Kazakh health ministry, said, however, that the real number of HIV-infected in Central Asia's largest country could be well over 20,000. According to the Kazakh health official, most of the HIV-positive people, almost 80 percent, were male, with injecting drug usage as the primary source of transmission. Two thirds of those infected were between 15 and 29. The former Soviet republic, with a population of some 15 million, has the fifth largest number of HIV cases among the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is going to further assist Kazakhstan in the field of agricultural development, said Tadao Chino, head of ADB, after meeting Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Monday in the Kazakh capital, Astana. The bank was reportedly scheduled to allocate a US $1.9 million grant for technical assistance projects targeting the country's agricultural regions. On Tuesday, Kazakhstan reportedly handed over three suspects - residents of the South Kazakhstan region - over to Uzbekistan following alleged involvement in a series of terror attacks in Uzbekistan that left at least 47 dead and dozens of injured earlier this year. A dozen suspects went on trial in Uzbekistan this week in the latest court proceedings over the attacks, AFP reported on Tuesday. The defendants, 13 men between the ages of 23 and 41, faced a range of charges over the attacks in Tashkent and the ancient city of Bukhara, including terrorism, organising a religious extremist group and threatening the constitutional system. To date, more than 100 people have already been convicted in relation to the March and April attacks, which featured the nation's first-ever suicide bombings and killed at least 33 insurgents, 10 policemen, three children and one bystander. Rights campaigners alleged that a number of defendants in the terror trials had been tortured into confessing. Staying in Uzbekistan, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) special envoy for Central Asia, Martti Ahtisaari, on Monday expressed regret that Tashkent had refused to grant opposition parties the registration they needed to take part in the poll. "This is not because of the lack of opposition political parties,'' Reuters quoted Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president, as saying. "In fact, a number of opposition parties have tried to register and participate, but never succeeded in doing that.'' Only five political parties loyal to current President Islam Karimov are officially registered in Uzbekistan and may seek seats in parliament. The Uzbek government has repeatedly refused to register the liberal opposition Erk (Freedom) Democratic Party and the Birlik (Unity) Popular Movement, as well as two agrarian parties. On Wednesday, the ADB and Tashkent signed four loan agreements for projects totalling $164.2 million in sectors that are key to improving livelihoods in Central Asia's most populous nation, the bank said. The four loans are designed to improve maternal and child health, boost access to affordable textbooks for Uzbek students, rehabilitate a key irrigation system and expand grain production. Uzbekistan joined the ADB in 1995 and as of 30 September, cumulative ADB lending to the country totalled $859.7 million for 19 projects. Also in Uzbekistan, the imam of a mosque in southern Uzbekistan, Rustam Klichev, was jailed for 14 years and 16 members of the same mosque were given similar sentences, Forum 18 News Service, a London-based religious freedom watchdog said on Wednesday. The Kashkadarya regional criminal court sentenced Klichev on charges of terrorism, inciting national, racial and religious hatred, undermining the constitutional basis of the republic of Uzbekistan and other charges. Klichev, 29, was arrested on 4 April. Kulpar Rakhimova, Klichev's wife, told Forum 18 in May that while searching their house security officers planted a leaflet that they later claimed had been issued by an alleged radical Islamic organisation named Jamaat. In Tajikistan, maternal mortality had gone down over the past two year, head of the Tajik institute for protecting maternity and childhood, Yevgeniya Narzulloyeva, said on Thursday. The Tajik Avesta news agency reported that the level of maternal mortality in the country before the 1990s was some 100 deaths per 100,000 women. Due to a plunge in the birth rate, improving awareness and more working women, that rate was currently 45-50 deaths per 100,000 women, while in 2003 it was 65 deaths per 100,000 women, Narzulloyeva said. Turkmenistan achieved Universal Salt Iodisation (USI) , the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Monday. UNICEF regional director for Central and Eastern Europe, CIS and the Baltics, Maria Calivis, presented the Turkmen authorities with an award on behalf of UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Council for Control of Iodine Deficiency Disorders (ICCIDD) in recognition of this achievement. "USI is the most effective way to protect children from iodine deficiency - the world’s leading cause of preventable mental retardation and brain damage. So this award is a major milestone for Turkmenistan. This is the first country in Central Asia to reach this target,” Calivis said. In Kyrgyzstan, a top World Bank official on Wednesday urged the Kyrgyz government to fight corruption at its heart in an effort to improve its economy. Corruption is the single biggest brake for economic and social advancement in Kyrgyzstan, Shigeo Katsu, World Bank vice president for Europe and Central Asia, said at an international donors meeting in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Katsu said fighting corruption and good governance were important for sustained growth and for the delivery of better basic services to the people. According to the most recent Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, Kyrgyzstan is one of he most corrupt countries worldwide, ranking 125 out of a total of 146 countries surveyed.