Weekly news wrap

Kazakhstan and China are to sign a deal early next week to construct a major crude oil pipeline between the two countries to boost Kazakh oil exports to China, Dow Jones news service reported, citing a Chinese government official, on Wednesday. The agreement is to be signed during Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev's visit to China. Construction of the 900-km pipeline is expected to begin in June. It is scheduled for completion in 2006 with initial output estimated at 10 million mt a year, expected to double later. The US $700 million pipeline - connecting Atasu in northwestern Kazakhstan to the border of China's Xinjiang autonomous region is the second section of a 3,000-km trunk line between the two countries. The first section, spanning 449 km from Atyrau to Kenkiyak in Kazakhstan, was completed at the end of 2002. Staying in Kazakhstan, four political parties that failed to undergo re-registration in 2003 have been compulsorily liquidated in Kazakhstan, the Kazakh Ekspress-K newspaper reported on Wednesday. According to a ruling made by the Almaty city special economic court, the Party of the Qazaq Yely (Kazakh People) national association, the [opposition] Republican People's Party of Kazakhstan, the Azamat [Citizen] party and the People's Congress Party of Kazakhstan no longer exist in the country. The founding documents and the stamps of these organisations were also deemed invalid. In Tajikistan, the country signed an agreement on Saturday with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) aimed at fighting human trafficking, AFP reported. The IOM will provide technical assistance and help train a new local police service to combat the problem. According to unofficial estimates, up to 270 Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Tajik women are currently in United Arab Emirates (UAE) jails, IOM official Frederic Chenais said. Some of these women, who were arrested after their visas expired, are believed to have been forced into prostitution. Also on Saturday, Tajikistan's president introduced a draft law to parliament that would impose a moratorium on executions, the AP reported. The move comes as international rights group Amnesty International (AI) expressed concern about the state executing four people in April. President Emomali Rakhmonov submitted the bill on Friday, a week after he said he would consider abolishing the death penalty in the country, parliamentary spokesman Mahmadato Sultonov said. Last year, Rakhmonov reduced the number of crimes punishable by death from 15 to five and revoked its use against women and minors. The four men executed were part of a group of eight who were convicted in 2003 of terrorism, hostage-taking and murder. Last month, AI strongly criticised the use of the death penalty in Tajikistan, saying suspects are condemned in unfair trials and relatives are often not informed of execution dates. Moscow is withdrawing its frontier troops, some 20,000, from the Tajik-Afghan border, Vyacheslav Trubnikov, Russia's first deputy foreign minister, told the Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper in an interview published on Wednesday, adding it would result in increased drug trafficking. "We are pulling out of Tajikistan in general. The result will be a porous border. Porous means drugs,'' he said. The Russians troops in the country are leaving at the request of Tajikistan, although Rakhmonov said two weeks ago the handover was a Russian initiative. Russian-led troops have helped to maintain stability in Tajikistan since a 1992-97 civil war. They monitor over 90 percent of the remote 1,344-km Tajik border with Afghanistan, the world's top opium producer. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov minister urged closer ties with Uzbekistan in the fight against terror after talks with Uzbek President Islam Karimov on Wednesday - the latest sign of the countries' rekindled friendship after years of stagnant relations, AP reported. "It is necessary to cooperate to effectively fight new challenges and threats such as the terrorist disease and extremist disease that exist both in Central Asia and Russia,'' he said. As a symbol of their improving relations, Ivanov said Russia and Uzbekistan would hold joint military exercises next year, the report added. Already this year, the Uzbeks have been invited to observe military exercises that Russia is staging with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Germany is to donate some $3 million to fight tuberculosis in Uzbekistan, the Uzbek media reported on Monday, citing a visiting delegation led by Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany's economic cooperation and development minister. AmeriCares, a US-based humanitarian organisation, donated humanitarian aid worth $3.5 million to the Uzbek charity foundation Soglom Avlod Uchun (For a Healthy Generation), the Uzbek UzA news agency reported on Tuesday. The cargo with medicaments and medical instruments is to be distributed among healthcare establishments of Uzbekistan. Over the recent years AmeriCares has delivered nine consignments of humanitarian aid to Uzbekistan worth a total of $40 million. In Turkmenistan, President Saparmurat Niyazov said on Wednesday that the country would outlaw child labour, widely used in the cotton harvest. "We forbid the use of schoolchildren tending and harvesting cotton as happened during the Soviet era,'' he was quoted by the Turkmen official newspaper, Neutral Turkmenistan. Reuters said that the latest initiative was aimed at stopping schoolchildren being set to work in cotton fields that supply factories making jeans for Western countries. "We absolutely welcome this step,'' said Mahboob Sharaeef, the head of the United Nations children's fund, UNICEF, in Turkmenistan. There are no up-to-date figures of the numbers of children who work in Turkmenistan's cotton fields, the country's number two export after natural gas, but international organisations have said in the past the practice is widespread. In neighbouring Uzbekistan, President Islam Karimov has also outlawed child labour but thousands of school-age children can be seen each year in its cotton fields at harvest time. Meanwhile in Kyrgyzstan, poverty should be halved to a level of 32.8 percent by 2005, compared to 1999, President Askar Akayev said while speaking at the 3rd national poverty reduction forum in the capital, Bishkek on Thursday. The country had managed to take a steady course of development, reduce the level of extreme poverty to 9 percent, Akayev added. UNDP administrator Mark Malloch Brown, who took part in the event, said Kyrgyzstan needed to develop its export base away from gold and energy resources, into the private sector, transport and communications, and the creation of new jobs. Brown also pledged support to the mountainous Central Asian state in next year's elections, hailing Akaev's intention not to run again and violate constitutional term limits.