Weekly news wrap

An explosion at a coal mine in central Kazakhstan killed 23 people and injured three, the AP reported on Sunday. A total of 27 miners were working in the mine in the Karaganda town of Shakhtinsk when the blast occurred, Karaganda regional administration spokesman Zhanibek Sadykanov said. Expert reports indicated that the explosion was caused by a methane blow-out. On Monday, a senior member of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir group that disavows violence but seeks to build a worldwide Islamic state was arrested in Kazakhstan, officials said. Vadim Barsenev, 31, was detained on Saturday in the southern city of Shymkent, and accused of inciting inter-ethnic and religious discord as a member of the group, the AP said quoting city police official Kalykul Abdramanov. Barsenev, an ethnic Russian who converted to Islam, is one of the oldest Hizb-ut-Tahrir members in Kazakhstan and is in charge of the group's public relations. Hizb-ut-Tahrir is banned and persecuted throughout Central Asia and mostly works underground. The visiting president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) on Wednesday urged the Kazakh government to work toward diversifying the economy, ensuring further growth and accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). "Our very strong view is that the stress must be put on the diversification of the economy," said Jean Lemierre, president of EBRD. Kazakhstan's economy depends heavily on extracting raw materials, with most investment concentrated in its oil and gas sector. The oil-rich former Soviet republic produces about 1 million barrels of oil a day and aims to triple output in the next two decades to become one of the world's top five oil exporters. The EBRD has invested about US $320 million in Kazakhstan this year and is planning to put in at least the same amount next year, Lemierre said. Washington is expected to increase funding to Kazakhstan by about $35 million to help the country fight the spread of biological weapons. The money will go to the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Programme, which was established in 1991 to help former Soviet countries destroy and safeguard weapons of mass destruction, the US Embassy in Kazakhstan said. One of the programme's current goals in Kazakhstan is to prevent the proliferation of biological weapons technology, pathogens and expertise, the Nunn-Lugar office said in a statement Wednesday. Some of the US funds also will be used to develop and test new molecular diagnostics and therapies to cure endemic diseases, like plague and anthrax, and to prevent their outbreaks in Central Asia, it said. Since 1992, under the Nunn-Lugar programme Kazakhstan has received about $200 million to withdraw Soviet nuclear weapons from its territory, clean up the aftermath of nuclear tests and shut down military facilities that had been used to produce weapons of mass destruction. In Kyrgyzstan, the country's President Askar Akayev on Thursday named the dates of presidential and parliamentary polls that are seen as a major test for the mountainous Central Asian republic, once praised as an island of democracy in the mainly authoritarian region. Parliamentary elections are expected to be held on 27 February followed by presidential elections on 30 October of next year, Akayev said. Yet Akayev, who has clung to power since 1991 through a series of elections and referenda judged by the West as flawed, made no mention of his previous promises to stand down in his address on Thursday, the AFP reported. In Tajikistan, the local Avesta news agency reported on Tuesday that there are more than 7,000 drug users in the country, 80 percent of whom are injecting drug users,. Azamjon Mirzoev, head of the Tajik HIV/AIDS control centre, warned that a significant growth in the number of HIV-infected could be revealed among drug users and labour migrants coming back and forth to Russia or other risk groups. Envoys of some European Union (EU) member-states to Dushanbe, including ambassadors from Britain, France and Germany, expressed regret on Wednesday after the seizure of a daily newspaper prevented from printing in Tajikistan. In a joint statement they said they had received no adequate explanation from the authorities for the confiscation of the 15,000 copy run of the independent Ruzi Nav weekly on arrival at Dushanbe airport after being printed in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. The copies of Ruzi Nav were impounded by the Tajik tax police and later the Tajik authorities ruled that the newspaper couldn't be circulated because it had stories critical of some government officials. Independent media officials have noted that press freedom is dwindling with the approach of parliamentary elections in February. More than 100 people were suspected of having contracted typhoid in Kolkhozobod and Jovon districts of the southern Khatlon province, Avesta reported on Wednesday. There were around 50 people infected with typhoid fever in Kolkhozobod and an epidemic prevention centre was set up in the main regional hospital. There were no clear data on the number of infected for Jovon region. Saodat Olaerova, deputy head of Kolkhozobod region, said that the number of people with the suspected typhoid reached 105 people. She mentioned that the source of infection was contaminated drinking water in the area. Russia handed over control of an 880-km stretch of the Tajik-Afghan border to Tajikistan as part of a plan aimed at full withdrawal of Russian border guards by 2006, the AP reported. The documents formalising the handover were signed on Thursday in Dushanbe by the head of Russia's border guard service, Col Gen Vladimir Pronichev, and the Tajik border troops commander, Abdurakhmon Azimov. Russian guards are still patrolling 350 km of the 1,340-km border. However, some observers expressed concern over a possible rise in smuggling and drug trafficking after the Russians leave. Tajik border forces are paid less and lack the Russians' advanced equipment.