Weekly news wrap

A new report released by UNAIDS and the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday revealed that women were increasingly affected by HIV/AIDS and nearly half of 37.2 million adults living with HIV in the world were females. Eastern Europe and Central Asia region had the second highest increase of 48 percent after East Asia. By the end of 2004, the region of the former Soviet Union will have around 1.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS, compared to a million people in 2002, it said. While the HIV prevalence rate remains less than 0.3 percent in Central Asia, four out of every five infections occur among people aged under 30, according to the report. Uzbekistan "hosts one of the youngest epidemics in the world," developing swiftly through commercial sex. Prostitution is also driving infection rates upwards in Kazakhstan, while drug use is the main cause for HIV spread in Kyrgyzstan. In Kazakhstan, over 600 people were reported to have contracted hepatitis A in the central Kazakh town of Abay, home to some 28,000 people. According to the Kazakh Ministry of Health, the number of sick reached 620 as of Saturday, of whom 253 were children under 14. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) issued a new strategy for Kazakhstan on Wednesday. The bank said that although Central Asia's largest state made visible progress in market-based economic reforms in the past two years, political reforms were slower and did not match economic achievements. The bank is expected to focus its support on private sector activities, primarily in the local financial sector and agribusiness and co-finance projects outside the natural resources sector that mainly fuelled economic growth of around 10 percent annually in the country over recent years. Public-sector involvement will concentrate on projects with significant transition impact or a regional dimension. In Uzbekistan, the country's foreign minister, Sadyk Safayev, called on Monday for regional unity in the fight against terrorism, saying this year's suicide bombings were alien to local culture and proof of foreign involvement in the attacks that killed dozens, the AP reported. "There are attempts to bring in the ideas of extremism to turn Central Asia into an assembly line for terrorism and a central route for massive drug trafficking," Safayev claimed. Earlier this year, the country saw a spate of terrorist attacks that targeted the US and Israeli embassies and included Central Asia's first-ever suicide bombings. More than 50 people were killed, mainly alleged militants and police. Uzbek authorities blamed the attacks on extremists linked to Al-Qaeda, but opposition groups alleged they were motivated by discontent at the Uzbek regime's harsh crackdown on independent Muslims. On Tuesday, Uzbek prosecutors said that the three suicide bombers who struck the US and Israeli embassies and chief prosecutor's office this summer in the Uzbek capital, killing four guards, were citizens of neighbouring Kazakhstan. A DNA examination of the bombers' remains after the 30 July attack in Tashkent identified them as Avaskhan Shayusupov, 38, and Mavlon Valiev, 28, residents of the southern Kazakh city of Taraz near the Uzbek border, and Dulat Iskakov, 32, of the Caspian Sea port of Atyrau, Svetlana Artikova, a spokeswoman for the general prosecutor's office, said. Tashkent is also asking Kazakhstan to extradite another citizen, Abbos Usmanov, for alleged complicity in earlier terror attacks in the spring that killed at least 47 people in Tashkent and central Bukhara province, Artikova added. On Wednesday, the US embassy in Tajikistan expressed concern over the suspension of an independent weekly's distribution, calling it a curb on press freedom in the country. The latest issues of the independent Ruzi Nav newspaper were seized by tax police three weeks ago when they were delivered from neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. The newspaper had to print abroad following a government crackdown on the independent press in the former Soviet republic. A government commission ruled last week that stories in the media outlet were critical of high-ranking government officials and could not be distributed, while the US embassy said the authorities were restricting press freedom and called upon both sides to make an effort to resolve the conflict. In Turkmenistan, a human rights group said on Thursday that conditions remained hard in the country's prisons. Citing former convicts and prison staff members, the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation, an NGO based in the eastern Bulgarian resort city of Varna, said abuse of prisoners' rights and torture were common practice in the Turkmen penitentiary system. The situation is aggravated by poor conditions and a high prevalence of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, the report said. Meanwhile, the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency reported on Thursday that over 11,000 foreigners had been deported from Russia this year. Nikolay Skorik from Moscow's department of interior said that they reportedly violated immigration procedures. The highest number of court decisions on deportation concerned citizens of Tajikistan (3,130) and Uzbekistan (2,765), he said. Some estimates suggest that there are around 5 million illegal labour migrants in Russia, mainly from other former Soviet republics, including Central Asian countries.