Weekly news wrap

With less than a month before the presidential elections in Kyrgyzstan, election officials registered seven candidates this week to run for the country's top job and replace former leader, Askar Akayev, who was ousted in a popular uprising in March. Among the candidates approved by the Central Election Commission (CEC), Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who became acting president in the turmoil that followed the 24 March uprising, is seen as a front-runner. The country's CEC disqualified several candidates, including Urmat Baryktabasov, head of the 'Mekenim Kyrgyzstan' movement. CEC officials said Baryktabasov was a Kazakh, and therefore ineligible to stand. On Friday, several hundred unarmed supporters of Baryktabasov stormed a Kyrgyz government building in Bishkek, in the largest protest to grip the Central Asian country since the uprising that ousted its former leader. A crowd of about 2,000 had gathered outside the building, shouting slogans in support of their candidate. Riot police forced the protesters out of the building, firing warning shots in the air before using tear gas to disperse the demonstrators. The unrest underscored the tensions reigning in the former Soviet republic less than a month before the 10 July vote. The issue of Uzbek asylum seekers in southern Kyrgyzstan who fled the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan after the security forces violently suppressed protests there in May was raised by the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) this week. The OSCE's chairman Dmitrij Rupel on Tuesday added to international criticism of Kyrgyzstan for alleged deportation of four Uzbek asylum seekers home and urging Uzbekistan to provide international access to the forcibly repatriated refugees. The Kyrgyz foreign minister, Roza Otunbayeva, conceded that the four Uzbek asylum seekers had been sent to Tashkent recently, the Kyrgyz Akipress news agency reported on Thursday. According to local and international rights group, up to 1,000 people, mostly unarmed civilians, may have been killed in Andijan, while the latest government figure on the casualties was 176. Swedish defence minister Leni Bjoerklund has instructed that the Scandinavian country's military should leave Uzbekistan and find another air base in the region following criticism by Amnesty International (AI) and individual members of the Swedish parliament that Sweden had military personnel stationed in a country that recently massacred its own citizens, the Swedish Dagens Nyheter web site reported on Sunday. Swedish soldiers at the Termez air base in Uzbekistan are working to provide logistical support for the Swedish effort in Afghanistan. The plan is to increase the force in Uzbekistan when elections are held in Afghanistan this autumn. In the long term, Sweden also plans to increase its involvement in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) - the NATO-assisted effort taking place in Afghanistan under a UN mandate. Earlier this month, both the US and NATO called for an international probe into the events in Andijan, which was rejected by Uzbek president Islam Karimov. The US military had already shifted key air operations out of Uzbekistan following new restrictions on the use of the critical airbase in the south of the country, repositioning search and rescue planes in Afghanistan and routing heavy cargo flights through neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. In Tajikistan, five people were injured on Monday in an explosion in front of the emergency ministry in the capital, Dushanbe, AFP reported, citing the country's interior minister, General Khumdin Charipov. "I do not rule out a terrorist attack," Charipov said. Most of the three-storey building's windows were blown out and a half a dozen cars were damaged. A simlar explosion occurred near the ministry on 31 January, killing one person when a bomb placed in a taxi exploded. Staying in Tajikistan, five people were killed in a rock fall in the east of the country, AP reported on Wednesday, adding that they were a family of shepherds. The Tajik emergency ministry said that the slide also blocked a river, creating a small lake that posed a danger to two mountain villages. Villagers were being evacuated while workers tried to open a channel and allow the lake to drain, it said. Tajik labour migrants' annual remittances amount to US $500 million annually, Tajik President Emomali Rahmonov said at the opening of an international bank conference in Dushanbe on Thursday. Rahmonov added that over 300,000 Tajiks were currently working in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries to earn a living, the Tajik Asia-Plus news agency reported. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that there could be more than 600,000 Tajik labour migrants in Russia alone or almost 10 percent of the country's total population. In Kazakhstan, health bodies started using new methods to treat HIV/AIDS in northern Pavlodar region, the Kazakh Kazinform news agency reported on Thursday. The chief doctor of the regional AIDS centre, Sagit Imangazinov, said that antiretroviral therapy could not be extended to all HIV-infected people because of the cost, so 50 people were chosen for the new treatment. The medications were provided by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. A total of 911 HIV-infected people, 203 of whom were women and four children, were currently registered in Pavlodar. Meanwhile, in western Kazakhstan, which has the lowest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in the country, the deadly disease was on the rise due to sexual intercourse, while in most of Central Asia, the predominant mode of transmission continues to be injecting drug usage. "AIDS is spreading in [western] Mangistau Region on an African scenario, it threatens not only risk groups but wider strata of the population too. Almost half of the infected people in the region were infected with HIV sexually," Natalya Babina, a Global Fund consultant, said. While some 5,000 HIV-positive cases have been registered since the disease first appeared in 1987 in the country, many health experts believe the real figures are 10 times that number.