Weekly news wrap

This week in Central Asia, unusually cold weather and heavy snow impacted on life in Kazakhstan, with temperatures on Wednesday night dropping to -35 degrees Celsius in the southern Almaty region, while in East Kazakhstan region the thermometer was between -37 and -42 degrees Celsius, the Kazakhstan Today news agency reported, citing the Kazakh emergencies ministry. Local media reported that hundreds of residents in the suburbs of the commercial capital Almaty protested a cut in municipal heating, saying that it was unbearable to live in their apartments that had been unheated for the past few weeks. Moreover, night buses had been suspended in Almaty province due to poor weather conditions. While Kazakhstan is battling with cold weather, Uzbekistan increased the price of natural gas it is selling to its neighbours, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, by over 30 percent, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on Tuesday. As of 1 January 2006, Tashkent is charging US $55 per 1,000 cu m of gas, compared to $42 last year. Both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are heavily dependent on gas supplies from Uzbekistan, which supplies more than 90 percent of their gas needs. The Russian RIAN news agency reported on Tuesday that gas supplies to customers in Tajikistan were limited to six hours every day. Uzbekistan announced in late 2005 that it would increase the price for its natural gas due to increased extraction and transport costs along with rising world prices. Staying in Uzbekistan, Uzbek President Islam Karimov named a new interior minister on Thursday following the resignation of Zokirjon Almatov, who became the subject of European Union (EU) sanctions, AFP reported. Karimov named Bakhodir Matlyubov as the new interior minister, moving him from his previous post as head of the customs service. Matlyubov's predecessor, Almatov, was among 12 Uzbek officials banned from entering the EU after last May's bloody crackdown in the Uzbek city of Andijan. Almatov was being treated for cancer in Germany when the EU announced its ban but was allowed to stay in the country for treatment. Rights groups said that Uzbek security forces violently suppressed the protests in Andijan on 13 May, killing up to 1,000 protesters, mainly unarmed civilians, while Tashkent placed the death toll at 187 people, saying they were mainly armed insurgents. In Tajikistan, the US government started delivering aid to national border guards, the Tajik Asia-Plus news agency reported on Tuesday. The US embassy in Dushanbe told Asia-Plus that the total amount of the aid was $3 million. Four US military aircraft had reportedly arrived in Dushanbe airport the day before and transported canned goods, ready meals, other foodstuffs, tents, medicines and other supplies to the border units trying to stem the tide of heroin trafficked from neighbouring Afghanistan. The Russian military is also assisting Dushanbe inn guarding the Tajik-Afghan border, AFP reported on Wednesday. Around 200 Russian officers are to advise Tajik border guards who took over patrolling the frontier with Afghanistan in June 2005 on fighting drug trafficking, illegal immigration and arms smuggling, according to a Russian security official in Dushanbe. Moscow's 11,000-strong force patrolled the 1,340 km border, one of the main routes for smuggling heroin from Afghanistan to Russia and Western Europe, since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 until June last year, when responsibility passed to Dushanbe. Tajik border guards in 2005 seized more than four mt of drugs from Afghanistan, of which half is heroin. On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law ratifying an agreement between the Russian and Tajik governments on labour migration, the Russian Itar-Tass news agency reported. The lower and upper houses of the Russian parliament approved the document in late December. The bill regulates the issues of labour activity and the protection of rights of Russians temporarily living and working in Tajikistan and Tajiks temporarily living and working in Russia. The document also aims to promote legal labour migration and avert the illegal use of labour from either country. Putin also ratified on the same day a similar agreement with Kyrgyzstan. According to some estimates there are up to 600,000 Tajiks and around 300,000 Kyrgyz labour migrants in Russia, the majority of whom are illegal. Some reports and surveys claim that up to 20 percent of all irregular labour migrants in Russia are subjected to exploitation and abuse, and experience slave-like conditions. In Turkmenistan, the government has restricted the number of Muslim pilgrims heading for Mecca, Forum 18 News Service, a religious freedom watchdog, reported on Thursday. Ashgabat continues to limit haj pilgrimage numbers to fewer than 5 percent of those who apply, the watchdog found, despite the requirement in Islam that all able-bodied Muslims who can afford to make the pilgrimage. This year, the Turkmen government is only allowing 188 pilgrims, despite an apparent quota from the Saudi authorities of more than 4,500 pilgrims. Restrictions on pilgrim numbers were introduced in 1992, the year after the country gained independence from the Soviet Union. Initially numbers were limited to 150 annually.