OSCE says to send police force to Kyrgyzstan
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said
on Friday it would send a 52-member unarmed police force to
southern Kyrgyzstan to monitor its fragile peace after ethnic
clashes there last month, Reuters reported.
OSCE heavyweights and regional players Russia and the United States have watched with unease the situation in Kyrgyzstan where they both have military air bases. The U.S. Manas air base is an important route to supply U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
At least 300 people were killed in clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks and thousands of homes burned down in the main southern cities of Osh and Jalalabad last month.
"We have adopted a document ... to dispatch to the regions of Osh and Jalalabad ... a group which will consist of 52 policemen representing the OSCE member states," Herbert Salber, director of the OSCE Conflict Prevention Centre, told reporters.
Salber gave no precise time frame for the mission. He said the OSCE police group could be expanded to 102 members if needed. "The group ... will work with the population in a bid to restore and, if possible, consolidate trust between people."
"This is the most important task," he said.
Salber was speaking during an informal meeting of foreign ministers of the OSCE member states held in Kazakhstan's financial capital Almaty. The ex-Soviet Central Asian republic holds the rotating chairmanship of the organisation this year.
OSCE Secretary General Marc Perrin de Brichambaut told Reuters that OSCE policemen would work closely with their Kyrgyz colleagues. The OSCE's Permanent Council, due to gather in Vienna next Thursday, would have to take a final decision on the deployment of the police force, he said.
"I think ... it is fair to say that there are good chances that the Permanent Council will adopt this decision," he said.
Kyrgyzstan, whose President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was ousted by a bloody revolt in April and fled to Belarus, aims to build a parliamentary democracy in a region ruled by tough autocrats and which is also a route for Afghan opiate drugs flowing to Russia.
Former imperial master Russia has warned an attempt to build a true popular democracy may bring only more chaos to the ethnically divided nation or even may end up in a power grab by Islamist extremists.
Kyrgyz interim leader Roza Otunbayeva argues however that parliamentary democracy will rid Kyrgyzstan of the political and clan rivalries that have dogged the nation since it gained independence following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The country has experienced two revolutions since then.
Kyrgyzstan first asked the Moscow-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to send troops, but the request was first turned down. A group of less than 10 unarmed CSTO observers was sent to southern Kyrgyzstan later.
OSCE heavyweights and regional players Russia and the United States have watched with unease the situation in Kyrgyzstan where they both have military air bases. The U.S. Manas air base is an important route to supply U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
At least 300 people were killed in clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks and thousands of homes burned down in the main southern cities of Osh and Jalalabad last month.
"We have adopted a document ... to dispatch to the regions of Osh and Jalalabad ... a group which will consist of 52 policemen representing the OSCE member states," Herbert Salber, director of the OSCE Conflict Prevention Centre, told reporters.
Salber gave no precise time frame for the mission. He said the OSCE police group could be expanded to 102 members if needed. "The group ... will work with the population in a bid to restore and, if possible, consolidate trust between people."
"This is the most important task," he said.
Salber was speaking during an informal meeting of foreign ministers of the OSCE member states held in Kazakhstan's financial capital Almaty. The ex-Soviet Central Asian republic holds the rotating chairmanship of the organisation this year.
OSCE Secretary General Marc Perrin de Brichambaut told Reuters that OSCE policemen would work closely with their Kyrgyz colleagues. The OSCE's Permanent Council, due to gather in Vienna next Thursday, would have to take a final decision on the deployment of the police force, he said.
"I think ... it is fair to say that there are good chances that the Permanent Council will adopt this decision," he said.
Kyrgyzstan, whose President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was ousted by a bloody revolt in April and fled to Belarus, aims to build a parliamentary democracy in a region ruled by tough autocrats and which is also a route for Afghan opiate drugs flowing to Russia.
Former imperial master Russia has warned an attempt to build a true popular democracy may bring only more chaos to the ethnically divided nation or even may end up in a power grab by Islamist extremists.
Kyrgyz interim leader Roza Otunbayeva argues however that parliamentary democracy will rid Kyrgyzstan of the political and clan rivalries that have dogged the nation since it gained independence following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The country has experienced two revolutions since then.
Kyrgyzstan first asked the Moscow-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to send troops, but the request was first turned down. A group of less than 10 unarmed CSTO observers was sent to southern Kyrgyzstan later.
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