Weekly news wrap

This week in Central Asia, the Kazakh media reported that the shrinking of the Aral Sea could cause a rise in infectious diseases. The report maintained that the region had very high level of oesophagus cancer. “This pathology accounts for 80 percent of all oncological diseases in the Aral Sea region,” the report said. On Wednesday, doctors and representatives from public associations assessed methods to treat people living with haemophilia, who number about 2,000 in Kazakhstan, and on how to prevent the disease, local media reported. Staying in Kazakhstan, some 50 Kazakh houses in the southern Makhtaaral and Saryagash districts, near the border with Uzbekistan, may be demolished as a result of a new border demarcation, local media reported. Governmental experts will make decisions on demolishing buildings and resettling people. They will also look at what compensations will be given. Early in the week, the World Bank president, James Wolfensohn, said at a meeting with Kazakh president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, that the economic situation in Kazakhstan should not be viewed separately from the region, because this country occupied almost a quarter of the territory of Central Asia. Wolfensohn also asserted that the implementation of the government's economic development plans had major potential. In Uzbekistan, the World Bank, together with the government of Switzerland and UN’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF), issued a grant for health improvement worth US $2,8 million. The project will contribute laboratory and technological equipment in order to enrich flour with ferrous components. In the northwestern autonomous republic of Karakalpakiston, two Uzbek citizens were reportedly injured by Turkmen border guards on the frontier with the Central Asia’s most reclusive state, Turkmenistan, an Ozod Ovoz correspondent reported. According to the head of the central hospital in Amudarya district, Qodira Jubatirova, as quoted by Centrasia website, the lives of the injured men were not in danger, but they were in a critical condition. On Friday, Turkmen president, Saparmurat Niyazov, visited Uzbekistan following an invitation by his Uzbek counterpart, Islam Karimov. They discussed relations between the countries they rule, as well as their concerns on regional and international policies. This is the first time that the two autocratic presidents had met in the past four years. Going to Tajikistan, a local broadcasting station reported the country was facing serious problems in moving radioactive waste dumps in the north. Given the grave situation emerging in the poorest Central Asian state, many agencies, such as the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), are reportedly planning to provide assistance in resolving the issue. About 240 mt of waste products, including 50 mt of radioactive waste, have been accumulated in dumps all across the country, but mainly in the country’s northern region of Soghd. Only one of them, located in the town of Chkalovsk, was buried properly. The rest are in the open air, with their contents being washed away by rain into rivers and spread by the wind to neighbouring settlements. Also in the Soghd region, three cases of children under 14 years with HIV were registered. Habibullo Aripov, director of Soghd’s regional AIDS centre, said that the current epidemiological situation in the country indicated a rapid rise in the number of new HIV cases, local media reported. Additionally, statistical information revealed that the number of registered drug users in northern Tajikistan currently exceed 1,100, compared to 994 last year. According to experts, the growth in the number of intravenous drugs users is a threat to the current increase in the number of people living with HIV in Soghd region. On Tuesday, the US announced that it would provide Tajikistan with more border security assistance, after Russia began withdrawing troops from the Afghan-Tajik border, the AP news agency reported. Meanwhile, a senior US diplomat pledged to boost cooperation with Kyrgyzstan in the war on terror and in other bilateral issues with Kyrgyz president Askar Akayev, the AP reported. “A peaceful and stable Afghanistan means stable development of the region,” Akayev said at a press conference. The US-led coalition established a base nearby the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, to support Afghan operations.