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Weekly news wrap

This week Central Asia hosted Junichiro Koizumi on the first visit by a Japanese premier to the region, international media reported. Koizumi, who steps down next month, held meetings with Uzbek President Islam Karimov and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev during his four-day visit to the region, which ended on Thursday.

"We need diversity in our energy strategy," AFP quoted Koizumi as saying before his departure on Monday. "Japan wants to build good relations with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, both of which have abundant resources."

An informal summit of presidents of Central Asian countries will be held in the Kazakh capital, Astana, on 2 September, the Kazakhstan Today news agency reported on Monday.

Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman, Yerzhan Ashykbayev, said that the summit would be attended by the presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

"Key regional issues and ways of working out joint measures to strengthen multilateral cooperation in Central Asia will be discussed during the forthcoming talks," Ashykbayev explained.

As part of the meeting, the heads of state would exchange views on a wide range of issues relating to bilateral relations, the situation in Central Asia, as well as key international problems of mutual interest, Ashykbayev added.

Uzbek rights activists have called on Kyrgyz authorities not to repatriate Uzbek asylum seekers, the Kyrgyz AKIpress news agency reported on Monday.

Their comments came after Kyrgyzstan extradited four Uzbek refugees and one asylum seeker, along with disappearances of five Uzbek asylum seekers in southern Kyrgyzstan over the past few weeks.

On Tuesday, Kyrgyz Prosecutor-General Kambaraly Kongantiev justified the extradition of the five Uzbeks, stating all had been found guilty of taking part in last year's unrest in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan, in which as many as 1,000 people had been killed in an anti-government protests.

Addressing a news briefing in Bishkek, Kongantiev described Jahongir Maqsudov, Yaqub Toshboev, Odiljon Rahimov, Rasuljon Pirmatov, and Fayoz Tojihalilov as "criminals and killers", Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.

The five were sent back to Uzbekistan on 9 August amid widespread international criticism. Since then, another four Uzbek asylum seekers - Valijon Bobojonov, Saidullo Shokirov, Bakhtiyor Ahmedov and Ilhom Abdunabiev - have gone missing in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh. Kongantiev said he had ordered his office to investigate those disappearances.

In Uzbekistan, another US-funded NGO was closed on Monday, the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency reported. Partnership in Academics and Development - an NGO working to empower Central Asia for success in the 21st century by offering resources, knowledge and skills - had been expelled for missionary activities, according to the Uzbek Justice Ministry. Fourteen of the NGO's staff were denied renewal of their accreditation and left the country.

Several international civic groups have been closed in Uzbekistan under the pretext of proselytising within the government's broader clampdown on foreign NGOs and media outlets, analysts say.

A controversial murder trial in Kazakhstan has ended with all 10 defendants found guilty, BBC reported on Thursday. They were on trial over the killing of the prominent opposition politician Altynbek Sarsenbaiuly. He was kidnapped and found dead with his driver and his bodyguard in February.

Relatives and colleagues of the victim dismissed the trial as a whitewash and said the authorities were shielding the real culprits.

The main defendant, former police officer Rustam Ibragimov, received the death penalty - commuted to life in prison - for murdering the outspoken politician. A senior civil servant, Erzhan Utembayev, was given 20 years for ordering the murder. The other eight defendants were given sentences of between three and 20 years.

In Tajikistan, presidential elections had been set for 6 November, AFP reported on Thursday. Central Asia's most impoverished nation has been ruled by Emomali Rakhmonov for over the past decade. Rakhmonov was first elected president in 1994 and reelected in 1999, but a constitutional amendment in 2003 made it possible for him to fulfill two additional and consecutive seven-year mandates.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe declared that the legislative elections of February 2005, in which the president's party scored 80 percent of votes cast, had not conformed to democratic standards.

AT/DS

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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