UN General Assembly
2010

I would first like to congratulate you, President Deiss, on your election to the presidency of the General Assembly at it sixty-fifth session. I wish you every success. For Kyrgyzstan, 2010 has been a year of profound changes and serious challenges to our continued existence, unity and statehood. In April, having overthrown the authoritarian system of State governance, with its flagrant corruption and illegality, the Kyrgyz people resolutely chose a path to renewal and genuine democratic development. Nevertheless, in May and June, the world witnessed acutely destabilizing situations in the south of Kyrgyzstan, where radical forces of the former Government and criminal and extremist groups sought revenge. Accordingly, they provoked bloody clashes 41 10-55122 between Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities, who have lived and worked in peace side by side for centuries. Those extremist forces insidiously played the ethnic card by knowingly exploiting the precariousness of such socio-economic problems as poverty, high unemployment — especially among youth — corruption and unequal access to economic and financial resources, which were ignored by the former Government. In that difficult period, the interim Government