Weekly news wrap

This week in Central Asia, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Thursday it had approved a US $4.8 billion package to cancel the debts of 20 of the world's poorest countries early next year, under a plan launched in June by the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations. Tajikistan is amongst the 20, mostly African, heavily-indebted poor countries to benefit from the move. "It will relieve the budgets of these countries of considerable expenditures which we are hoping will be used to reach the millennium development goals," said Mark Allen, the IMF's director for policy development. The latest agreement will write off 100 percent of debts owed to the fund at the end of 2004. No provision has been made for debt issued after 1 January 2005, Allen noted. The official election body in Kazakhstan declared incumbent President Nursultan Nazarbayev the winner of Sunday's presidential poll on Wednesday, amid claims from the opposition that the vote was manipulated, AP reported. Nazarbayev, who has led the oil-rich Central Asian nation since the Soviet era, was re-elected with 91 percent of the vote, according to final results released by the Kazakh Central Elections Commission (CEC). Nazarbayev's closest challenger and main opposition leader, Zharmakhan Tuyakbai, received less than 7 percent of the vote. The announcement by the CEC came two days after the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said the election failed to comply with international standards and was marred by numerous violations. The US government also said on Monday the election did not meet international standards, although some improvements were shown over previous votes. Kazakhstan's foreign minister on Tuesday condemned OSCE's critical report of the election, saying it could not be deemed as neutral. "We disagree with some negative assessments of the OSCE@, Kazakh Foreign Minister Kasymzhomart Tokayev told ministers from 55 OSCE nations meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Staying in Kazakhstan, Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticised Astana on Saturday over an alleged secret, forcible handover to Uzbekistan of 10 suspected Islamic radicals despite the risk of torture at home. The 10 Uzbek men, wanted by Tashkent on charges of religious extremism, were arrested in the southern Kazakh city of Shymkent on Monday and repatriated the next day, the group said. No official extradition procedure was followed, it said. Uzbekistan has been recognised by the UN as a country where torture is routinely used in places of detention. On Tuesday, Kazakh security officials flatly denied reports of extradition. On Thursday, Kazakh authorities seized all copies of an opposition newspaper - Zhuma-Times - that carried a front-page story alleging manipulation in last weekend's presidential vote, deputy editor of the paper Bakhytgul Makenbai, said. Makenbai added that the weekly on Thursday also carried a story on developments in a corruption scandal in the US - known as Kazakhgate - that involves Nazarbayev's former US adviser on oil contracts, AP reported. The former adviser, James Giffen, is accused of receiving bribes in negotiating oil deals in Kazakhstan for transnational companies. Makenbai said 100,000 copies of his publication were seized by police without explanation before they left the printers in the commercial capital, Almaty. Opposition newspapers were repeatedly seized by authorities and their distributors faced harassment in the run-up to the election. In Uzbekistan, courts convicted another 58 alleged participants of the May uprising in the eastern city of Andijan and sentenced them to up to 20 years in prison, officials said Monday. The defendants were convicted on charges of violation of the constitution, premeditated murder and terrorism, Uzbekistan's Supreme Court said. They were given prison terms ranging from 12 to 20 years. Rights groups say upwards of 1,000, mostly civilians, were killed in the violent government crackdown on protests in Andijan. Tashkent said the death toll was 187. Last month, Uzbekistan's highest court sentenced the first 15 alleged participants of the Andijan uprising to up to 20 years in jail. The trial was criticised by rights groups as a government-orchestrated show, with defendants' testimony coerced by torture. US Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns on Tuesday branded Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan "absolute dictatorships", during an OSCE ministerial conference, AFP reported. "If you look at the development in Europe since the end of the Soviet empire ... the greatest conflicts ... are east of Vienna and the greatest lack of reforms in terms of democracy, human rights, electoral practices, rule of law, are in countries like Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, countries that are absolute dictatorships both," Burns reportedly said. The OSCE and the European Union (EU) have also harshly criticised Tashkent over its clampdown on dissent in Andijan. OSCE chairman, Dimitrij Rupel of Slovenia, demanded Tuesday that Tashkent agree, as promised, to authorise international observers to attend trials connected with the bloody suppression of the Andijan uprising. Neighbouring Turkmenistan is ruled with an iron fist by President Saparmurat Niyazov, who was declared president-for-life of the energy-rich country of some five million people in 1999.