Weekly news wrap

An IMF delegation led by the IMF managing director, Horst Köhler, is expected to visit Kazakhstan on 14-15 November 2003, according to the IMF mission in Kazakhstan, which has noted that this will be the first visit to Kazakhstan paid by the IMF managing director. Köhler's visit is connected with the 10th anniversary of the Kazakh national currency, the tenge, which was introduced on 15 November 1993. The IMF mission has been operating in Kazakhstan since 1995. Staying in that country, Lt-Gen Nartay Dutbayev, the chairman of the Kazakh National Security Committee, said at the 49th session of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Council of Commanders of Border Troops in the Kazakh commercial capital, Almaty, on Wednesday that international terrorist organisations were planning to carry out activities in the CIS countries. "International terrorist organisations remain active and are hatching more plans to transfer their activities to the territories of neighbouring countries, including CIS countries," he said, noting that in areas adjacent to the CIS's borders "a complicated and serious situation" was arising. Kazakh media reported on Thursday that President Nursultan Nazarbayev had signed two laws ratifying a loan agreement for the implementation of a project on water supply in the capital, Astana. The Japan Bank for International Cooperation is expected to provide a loan worth US $161 million on favourable conditions. The funds will be used to build a water-intake station and change obsolete conduits, thereby to improve the quality of the water consumed in the city. The project is planned to be completed in 2008. In neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, officers of the Kyrgyz National Security Service (KNSS) had detained a group of people who were plotting terrorist acts in the area of the US-led international antiterrorist coalition's Ganci air base at the Manas airport, near the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, sources at the KNSS said on Wednesday. According to their data, the names of the three people have not been made public in the interests of the investigation. They are said to be followers of the radical Hizb-ut Tahrir (Liberation Party), which is banned in Kyrgyzstan. Going to Uzbekistan, Russian media reported on Tuesday that Radio Liberty and BBC broadcasts in Uzbekistan were being jammed, with local listeners complaining that they could not tune into their favourite stations. This was apparently being done because foreign radio stations and media outlets had started broadcasting and publishing compromising reports about the Uzbek president's daughter' Gulnora Karimova. An India-Central Asia Regional Conference opened on Thursday in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, highlighting India's efforts to increase engagement in the region. "For us, Central Asia is our immediate strategic neighbourhood. Our increasing engagement is aimed at peace and prosperity in Central Asia," Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha said during the conference. The three-day conference, organised by the Uzbek Institute of Strategic Studies and the Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis, gathered researchers and analysts from 20 countries to discuss regional economic and security issues. India is a huge potential market for the region, particularly in terms of oil and natural gas, but although there have been some initiatives to transport these fuels to India, the initiatives still have to be translated into action for various reasons. As proof of that increased engagement, Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes on Thursday promised to step up cooperation with Kyrgyzstan in combating Islamic terrorism. "The Taliban and al-Qaeda have regrouped, and there is no sign that they have peaceful intentions. Both our countries face identical threats," Fernandes said. He is expected to hold talks in neighbouring Kazakhstan on Friday. A 10-day international seminar on the treatment and rehabilitation of drug addicts, which ended on Thursday in Tashkent, made recommendations for drawing up rehabilitation programmes to treat drug addicts. The event was supported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Central Asia. James Callahan, the UNODC regional representative, said the seminar had been held as part of an international project to develop a network of AIDS/HIV prevention services and to treat drug addicts in Central Asian states. According to some sources, there are over 600,000 drug addicts in the region; however, only 15 per cent of them are undergoing treatment and rehabilitation. Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Tadao Chino is expected to discuss ADB's assistance programmes and underpin the importance of regional cooperation in Central Asia during his seven-day tour of the region, which started on Thursday. "Improved transport links, strengthened trade relations and closer communication and cooperation among the nations of Central Asia and their close neighbours is the surest and quickest way to reduce poverty and build strong economies in the region," Chino reportedly said. During the tour, he is to visit Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, where he will also open the second Ministerial Conference on Central Asia Economic Cooperation in Tashkent on 12 November. The ADB has offered increasing support for regional cooperation in Central Asia since it initiated the programme in 1997, whose primary objective is to promote economic growth and raise living standards by encouraging economic cooperation among the participating countries. On Wednesday, a UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee named 58 countries that had failed to meet the 31 October deadline to submit reports on measures they were taking to stop supporting, financing and providing sanctuary to terrorists. The committee is monitoring what all 191 UN member states are doing to implement a Security Council resolution adopted less than three weeks after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US. The resolution required UN members to adopt legislation and take administrative measures and other steps to halt all support for terrorists. Of the named 58 countries almost all are developing nations in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, one of them being Tajikistan. A report, released by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) on Thursday in New Delhi, pointed to the fact that sexism continue to figure in school textbooks in Central and Eastern Europe. "Gender biases in textbooks, as well as the stubborn silence on gender inequality are dangerous trends," said the "Education for All Global Monitoring Report" prepared by UNESCO. According to the report, in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, most school texts do not write about women outside their home environment. Female teachers constitute 90 percent of all primary school teachers in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, while in Uzbekistan the management in schools remains predominantly male. In Tajikistan, heavy snowfall closed the pass linking the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, with the country's north. The Anzob pass has been closed due to a heavy snowfall in the area, Tajik media reported on Thursday. "The snow is 60 to 70 cm thick at the 82 and 84 km of the Anzob pass and it is still snowing," they said, adding that the traffic police had imposed a temporary ban on travel via the pass. Turkmenistan has failed to sign a landmark treaty designed to protect the fragile environment of the Caspian Sea, which means that the ground-breaking agreement is not legally binding. Ministers from Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation all signed the Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea at a ceremony in the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Tuesday. In the case of Turkmenistan, however, its vice minister of nature protection, Makhtumkulu Akmuradov, after giving a short speech on the importance of the environmental stability of the Caspian Sea, simply returned to his seat. Even when all five countries have signed the treaty, it must then be ratified by each member government - and this may take a couple of years. At least three people had been killed and dozens injured in a domestic gas blast in Turkmenistan's capital, Ashgabat, on Wednesday, rescuers and city government officials reported. The civil defence head, Igor Shilov, reportedly said that the explosion had resulted from a leak of gas which blew up the upper section of a four-storey building on Wednesday. The gas supply system in Turkmenistan, as well as in other Central Asian nations, dates back to the Soviet era, and since gaining independence in 1991 no comprehensive maintenance or repair works have been done. Drivers in northern Turkmenistan who failed to pay on-the-spot fines were being sent to help bring in this year's cotton harvest, Memorial, a Moscow-based human rights organisation, said on Wednesday. "On various pretexts, traffic police have started imposing huge fines on drivers, many of whom can't pay, in which case their licence is withdrawn and only returned when they produce proof of 10 days' work in the cotton fields," Memorial said. Children as young as nine were being deployed in the fields as part of a range of measures intended to boost the harvest in the remote Dashoguz region, Memorial said in a statement.