Kyrgyzstan's ousted President Askar Akayev said he was ready for talks with the Central Asian state's new parliament, it was reported today.
"Today the new parliament is the only legitimate body in our republic," Interfax quoted Mr Akayev as saying in a newspaper interview, due to appear tomorrow in the offical Russian newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
"With this parliament and its speaker . . . I am ready to start a dialogue to put life in Kyrgyzstan back on a constitutional track if I receive safety guarantees," said Mr Akayev, who is now in exile in Russia. He has refused to resign.
Legislators from an old parliament had struggled for supremacy against newly elected rivals since Thursday, when opposition-led protesters overran government buildings and toppled Mr Akayev's government.
The old parliament's upper house ended its defiance and disbanded today, one day after a similar move by its lower house, deferring to a new legislature packed with politicians supported by the self-exiled president.
The move apparently signalled an accommodation between the old elite and the emerging leadership of former opposition figures. The chamber's speaker,
Muratbek Mukashev, read a statement signed by 32 politicians saying that the 45-seat house would end its work to avoid further conflict.
The Supreme Court had hastily reinstated the old parliament the night of Mr Akayev's ouster.
But the new parliament, which already had convened two days earlier, secured the backing of country's election commission over the weekend, and the country's new opposition-dominated leadership increasingly swung toward the new parliament in recent days.
At the height of the conflict, the two parliaments held competing sessions on separate floors of the same building.