UZBEKISTAN: Defence officials from the US and Russia last week helped block a new demand for an international investigation into the Uzbekistan government's shooting of hundreds of protesters last month, according to sources.
European officials had pushed to include language calling for an independent investigation in a communiqué issued by defence ministers of Nato countries and Russia on Thursday in Brussels.
But the joint communiqué merely stated that "issues of security and stability in Central Asia, including Uzbekistan," had been discussed.
The outcome obscured an internal US dispute over whether Nato ministers should raise the May 13th shootings in Andijan at the risk of provoking Uzbekistan to cut off US access to a military air base on its territory.
The communiqué's wording was worked out after what several sources called a vigorous debate in Brussels between US defence officials, who emphasised the importance of the base, and others, including State Department representatives at Nato headquarters, who favoured language calling for a transparent, independent and international inquiry into the killings of Uzbekistan civilians by police and soldiers.
State and Defence Department spokesmen, asked to comment about the debate, said Washington had one policy. But other officials said the disagreements between Defence and State officials reflected a continuing rift in the administration over how to handle a breach of human rights that has come under sharp criticism by the State Department, the European Union and some US lawmakers.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said that international involvement in an inquiry into the killings is essential, and has declined an Uzbek invitation for Washington to send observers to a commission of inquiry controlled by the parliament.
Three US officials said Uzbek President Islam Karimov had retaliated against her criticism by recently curtailing certain US military flights into the air base at Karshi-Khanabad, in the country's southeast. - (LA Times-Washington Post Service)