From: OMARS@auvm.american.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.afghanistan
Subject: Central Asian leaders hold summit
Date: 7 Jan 93 16:53:16 GMT
Organization: The American University - University Computing Center


Date: Mon, 4 Jan 93 6:16:05 PST

        MOSCOW (UPI) -- Leaders of the five Central Asian former Soviet
republics met Monday in the Uzbekistan capital Tashkent and agreed to
step up cooperation on regional security and give humanitarian aid to
strife-torn Tadzhikistan.
        This is the second regional summit of the five Central Asian
presidents since the breakup of the Soviet Union. The last one was held
in early 1992 in the Kazakhstan capital Alma Ata.
        In a joint communique issued in Tashkent, the leaders expressed their
``moral support for the constitutional authorities in Tadzhikistan'' and
said they would provide ``humanitarian aid in the form of food, medicine
and clothes'' to the stricken republic.
        Tadzhikistan has been wrenched apart by nine months of bitter
fighting between Islamic rebels and pro-Communist forces in a civil war
compounded by ethnic hostilities and clan rivalries, uprooting many
thousands of people. The government has changed hands three times during
the conflict.
        Tadzhik officials last week said there were 537,000 officially
registered refugees in the country, just over 10 percent of the
population of 5.5 million, according to the Russian state news agency
Itar-tass.
        The backward, mountainous republic's economy has been paralyzed by
the war, with officials assessing economic damage at $216 million, and
70,000 people have fled the country, many across the Afghanistan border.
        Attempts by Tadzhikistan's neighbors to send peacekeeping troops to
the region have so far come to nothing, with Central Asian states making
do with declarations of solidarity and some humanitarian aid.
        Next-door Uzbekistan, with its large Tadzhik minority, is
particularly alarmed by developments in Tadzhikistan, fearing ethnic and
religious bloodshed could spill over onto its soil.
        The only non-Tadzhik armed force stationed in the republic is a
Russian motorized infantry division, which has been used by government
forces to restore order in the Tadzhik capital Dushanbe.
        Russian troops on the Tadzhik-Afghanistan border have come under
increasing pressure in recent weeks as Tadzhik refugees storm border
posts to flee fighting between pro-government troops and retreating
Islamic rebels.
        Participating in the one-day Tashkent summit were presidents
Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Askar
Akayev of Kyrgyzstan, Saparmurad Niyazov of Turkmenistan and the
Chairman of the Tadzhik Parliament and Tadzhik leader Emomali Rakhmonov.
        The Central Asian heads of state discussed ways of coordinating
economic and finance policy as a means of minimizing the effects of
inflation and an alarming fall in industrial production. They also
talked about strengthening regional security.
        The presidents agreed to hold such meetings on a regular basis and
scheduled the next one for the Turkmenistan capital Ashgabad in April.
        The five leaders were due to meet during a Commonwealth of
Independent States summit in the Belarus capital Minsk on Christmas Day,
but the meeting was put off till Jan. 22, the latest in a series of C.I.
S. summit postponements.
        Kazakh President Nazarbayev is impatient with the slow pace of
integration within the Commonwealth and has said the presidents should
either turn the C.I.S. into a fully-fledged confederation or admit it is
a failure and go their separate ways.
        The Tashkent summit suggests the republics of Central Asian may turn
their back on the post-Soviet Commonwealth and create their own mini-
confederation, with regional security structures and closer economic
integration.