Kyrgyzstan oppn figure names ministers

Age, Australia

March 26, 2005 – 6:14AM

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Kyrgyzstan’s interim prime minister chose his key officials on Friday,
the speaker of parliament’s lower house said as the new leadership
moved quickly to try to quell widespread disorder and looting following
the ouster of the president.

“The city looks as if it has gone mad,” said Felix Kulov, a prominent
opposition leader released from prison during Thursday’s turmoil and
appointed coordinator of the country’s law-enforcement agencies.

Gunshots rang out on a street in downtown Bishkek after dark on Friday
as helmeted police in bulletproof vests chased a rowdy group of youths.

In another part of the darkened capital, with its streetlights
extinguished, shots were fired near the central department store
on the main avenue where vigilantes and police were on duty against
looters. Police fired into the air to warn off a group of looters,
witnesses said.

The whereabouts of deposed President Askar Akayev remained a mystery,
although Russian news agencies carried a statement purportedly from him
saying he was out of the country and denying claims by his opponents
in Kyrgyzstan that he had resigned. Akayev’s spokesman in Bishkek
said he did not know about that statement.

At Akayev’s lavish residence in the outskirts of the capital, the
chief security guard who identified himself as Colonel Alymkulov said
the house was empty and as yet untouched by looters.

The new leader, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, chose mostly prominent opposition
figures for the posts of foreign, defence and finance ministers and
chief prosecutor. For the job of interior minister, he picked Myktybek
Abdyldayev, a former chief prosecutor who had been fired on Wednesday
by Akayev.

He appointed them as acting ministers, thereby avoiding the need to
have them approved by parliament’s upper house.

Bakiyev also signed an order appointing a communications minister and
governors of the northern Chui and the southern Osh and Jalal-Abad
regions, which were the epicentre of anti-Akayev protests that grew
until they drove Akayev from power.

The new leadership faced the immediate challenge of halting vandalism
and looting in the capital and preventing it from spreading to
other cities.

Seven thousand people in Jalal-Abad celebrated the Kyrgyz opposition’s
victory, said Gamal Soronkulov, opposition chief of security in the
town. He said police started patrolling and security has been stepped
up to avert looting.

The town’s main square has been renamed Liberty Square, Soronkulov
said. Opposition supporters in Osh, another southern town and
Kyrgyzstan’s second-largest, were preparing to hold similar
celebrations on Saturday, a police official in Osh said.

In Bishkek, Kulov urged police, who have virtually disappeared from
the streets, to return to work or face punishment. But he acknowledged
on Friday that few police had shown up and looting went on unimpeded.

“It’s an orgy going on here,” Kulov told reporters. “We have arrested
many people, we are trying to do something, but we physically lack
people.”

After weeks of sporadic and intensifying protests in the south of
the country, propelled by widespread anger over disputed elections,
events moved quickly on Thursday and Friday, with crowds taking over
government buildings in the capital and the sudden flight of Akayev.

Bakiyev emerged from the Parliament building on Friday and said he
had been named Kyrgyzstan’s acting prime minister and president.

“Freedom has finally come to us,” Bakiyev told a crowd in the central
square of the capital.

His appointment as acting prime minister – and thus, under the
constitution, acting president – was endorsed in a late-night session
by a newly restored parliament of lawmakers who held seats before
the elections that fuelled the protests.

The move set Bakiyev squarely at the helm of the leadership emerging
from the fragmented former opposition.

Kyrgyzstan became the third former Soviet republic over the past
18 months – after Georgia and Ukraine – where popular protests have
brought down long-entrenched leaders widely accused of corruption.

Roza Otunbayeva, named the foreign minister, said she would recall
the ambassador to the United States, Baktybek Abdrisayev, who has
refused to recognise the new government.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking during a visit to Armenia on
Friday, lamented the violence and looting in Kyrgyzstan, saying that
“it’s unfortunate that yet again in the post-Soviet space, political
problems in a country are resolved illegally and are accompanied by
pogroms and human victims.”

He urged the new leadership to restore order quickly, and praised
them for having helped develop bilateral ties during their earlier
work in the government.

Putin also said the Kremlin wouldn’t object if Akayev wanted to go
to Russia, but the country’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander
Yakovenko said Moscow didn’t know where Akayev was.

Bakiyev told the crowd on the square in Bishtek that Akayev was
“not on the territory of the republic. I don’t know where he is.”

In the unconfirmed statement carried by Russian news agencies,
Akayez was quoted as saying, “My current stay outside the country is
temporary. Rumours of my resignation are deliberate, malicious lies.”

Kulov said Akayev had fled to a foreign country after being turned
away by Russia. The Russian news agency Interfax said Akayev and his
family were in neighbouring Kazakhstan.

Bakiyev said he would fight corruption – a major complaint against
Akayev’s regime – and the clan mentality that roughly splits the
country between north and south.

“I will not allow the division of the people into north and south,”
he said. “We are a united nation.”

The Red Cross reported dozens injured in the turmoil Thursday, while
lawmaker Temir Sariyev said three people had been killed and about
100 injured.

On Friday, a shopping centre on the main avenue stood nearly destroyed
by fire and strewn with wreckage that spread into the street, as smoke
hung in the air. Cars were picked clean, their windows and tires gone.

The takeover in Bishkek followed similar building seizures in the
country’s impoverished south. The protests began even before the
first round of parliamentary elections on February 27 and swelled
after March 13 run-offs that the opposition said were seriously flawed.

The fractious opposition unified around calls for more democracy,
an end to poverty and corruption, and a desire to oust Akayev, who
had led Kyrgyzstan since 1990, before it gained independence in the
Soviet collapse.

There was no sign the new leadership would change policy toward
the West or Russia. Unlike the revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine,
foreign policy has not been an issue.

Both the United States and Russia have military bases near Bishkek.

“All intergovernmental agreements will remain in full force and are
in full effect,” Bakiyev pledged.

Kyrgyzstan has been a conduit for drugs and a potential hotbed
of Islamic extremism. There was no indication, however, that the
opposition would be more amenable to Islamic fundamentalist influence
than Akayev’s government has been.

© 2005 AP

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