Weekly news wrap

The World Bank on Thursday endorsed US $500 million in aid to help countries deal with avian flu, ahead of next week's meeting in Beijing where additional funds will be sought. Kyrgyzstan will be the first country to benefit from the new funding and will receive about $5 million to prepare for bird flu. Uzbekistan has not registered any bird fly symptoms yet, but authorities have launched protective and preventive measures, the health ministry said this week. According to deputy health minister Bakhtiyer Niyazmatov health checks at 96 border points. Since October last year importation of live poultry, poultry meat, eggs and by-products from Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Russia has been banned. The ministry is supervising the capture and test of some wild birds and domestic poultry to try and identify the deadly virus. No cases of bird flu have been registered in Kazakhstan yet, although the Kazakh national avian flu action plan is now operational, state media reported on Wednesday. A network of laboratories, carrying out flu research are working to test wild and domestic birds and have facilities to test possible human infection. The health ministry says it has sufficient quantities of bird flu drugs to deal with an outbreak. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), globally H5N1 has infected 147 people and killed 78 of them, according to the latest official tally, which includes three Turkish cases. In Kyrgyzstan members of an outlawed Islamic movement distributed free meals and toys in the south of the country at the start of the Eid al-Adha festival, or Feast of the Sacrifice, on Monday. Police attempted to break up the gathering organised by Hizb-ut-Tahrir in the city of Osh, RFE/RL's Kyrgyz service reported. The move by the police angered people attending the event, who demanded the police stop interfering in what they argued was a peaceful event devoted to an Islamic holiday. After some negotiations, the celebration was permitted to go ahead. Southern Kyrgyzstan is home to many followers of Hizb-ut-Tahrir. The movement, that professes to advocate political change through peaceful means, is banned in all Central Asian republics. The border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan is poorly equipped to prevent drug smuggling, the head of the Tajik Agency for Drug Control said on Thursday. Speaking at a meeting with the heads of diplomatic missions and representatives of international organisations accredited in Tajikistan, Rustam Nazarov said only 652 km of the 1,344 km-long border were equipped with any substantial defences against trafficking. The rest of the border between the two countries is formed by the Pyandzh river, and poorly guarded, Nazarov said. Tajik border guards only have two helicopters and their service life will end next month, he said. In April, Russian border guards withdrew from Afghanistan, where they had been guarding a 232 km sector of the border with Tajikistan since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Afghanistan is one the world's main producers of illegal drugs, and Tajikistan is a major gateway for smugglers seeking to supply CIS and world markets. Kyrgyzstan should reject the Uzbek government's proposal that Bishkek return four refugees in exchange for Uzbek government assurances not to torture the men, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday. The Uzbek government has offered diplomatic assurances and vague promises of access by international organisations to the four if they are returned, HRW said. In London, Amnesty International (AI) said that such assurances are not enough. The four fled to Kyrgyzstan after violence in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan in May 2005. They have received formal refugee status from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The top prosecutor in Bishkek said on Thursday he had issued formal warnings to two newspaper editors and may take legal action against them for allegedly slandering President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, according to AP, quoting local press reports. "Recently some media have published articles distributing unreliable information, some of it slanderous with regard to the character of Kurmanbek Bakiyev, affecting his honour [and] dignity and undermining his reputation," Prosecutor General Uchkun Karimov said at a press conference in Bishkek. Litsa Editor-in-Chief Bermet Bukasheva received a warning because the newspaper published a 27 December 2005, interview in which two politicians accused Bakiyev of corruption. Komsomolskaya Pravda v Kyrgyzstane Editor-in-Chief Aleksandr Kulinskii received a warning stemming from a 6 January article describing widespread government corruption. Karimov threatened unspecified legal action against the editors if they continued publishing "slanderous" articles, AKI Press reported. Kyrgyzstan has both civil and criminal libel laws, so the editors could face potential monetary damages or up to three years in prison. Bakiyev came to power in March following a popular uprising sparked by widespread anger fraud-marred parliamentary elections - along with weeks of government censorship, harassment, and obstruction of the press. "It would be very unfortunate if recent national gains in free expression were undermined by the local prosecutor," said Ann Cooper, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. "We urge all authorities to stop this harassment of the press."