he leader of the three-member Uzbekistan agriculture delegation, Dr Alim Pulatov, has said that his country was trying to make a break from the past in agricultural practices and was seeking Pakistan's cooperation to facilitate the transition.

He told Dawn that a participatory Resource Conservation Technology Project (RCTP), launched by the government of New Zealand in Pakistan and Uzbekistan is a step in that direction.

Under the project, the government of New Zealand is assisting the two countries in promoting resource conservation technologies that have become vital in view of the growing scarcity of resources in terms of availability of water, depletion of land and rising cost of inputs.

Dr Pulatov said that his country had a mono crop agriculture system in the past. During former Soviet Union's control, Uzbekistan had mainly cultivated cotton. After independence, it had undertaken the sowing of wheat also with a view to providing food security to the populace.

Till three years back, Uzbekistan cultivated wheat on about one million hectares of irrigated land, but the cropping area has to be increased due to the food needs of the people. He said his country was looking towards resource conservation technologies to develop wheat crop in non-irrigated areas also.

Under the project, an area of about 3,500 acres is to be cultivated with resource conservation technologies (RCTs), like bed plantation and zero tillage, he said. While these technologies would be initially applied to wheat growing, they would later be used for cotton cultivation as well. During his visit to Pakistan, Dr Pulatov, besides meeting the Punjab Agriculture Minister Mr Khurshid Zaman, held discussions with officials of the provincial and federal departments and organizations dealing with agriculture, particularly research and water conservation scientists.

Pulatov, who is vice rector for international affairs & training and the head of environmental engineering department at the Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers (TIIAME) also met chairmen of PCRWR, PARC and NARC and vice chancellors of Barani and agricultural universities at Rawalpindi and Faisalabad.

He also held extensive discussion with Mushtaq Gill, director general, On Farm Water Management (OFWM) section of Punjab's agriculture department. In Pakistan, the OFWM is managing RCTP and spearheading the campaign for RCTs. The project is headed by Dr Ashraf Chaudhry, an agricultural expert of Pakistani origin, who is settled in New Zealand and teaching at its Massey University. Dr Chaudhry was also inPakistan at the start of the Uzbekistan delegation's visit and attended the launch of the project at Shirin Maafi village in Okara. Alim Pulatov and other members of the Uzbekistan delegation also attended the event.

Dr Pulatov said that he was convinced of the usefulness of the new technologies, which saved water, fuel and labour and helped the farmers increase yield. This is what the world needed today to meet the growing food requirements of the population. He was looking forward to the time, when these technologies would be widely used in his country. (Dawn, November 12)

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ndonesia's PT Bumi Modern has bought the Le Meridien hotel in the Uzbek capital Tashkent for $40 million, the hotel's marketing manager said on Thursday.

Timur Kalandarov told Reuters that Bumi had bought the hotel from another Indonesian company, Bakrie, and would also take over the management of the hotel, which has been renamed the Bumi Tashkent International.

Kalandarov said the 15-storey, 190-room hotel had been making losses since 1999. The hotel was built in 1995 by India's Tata Projects Ltd and sold the following year to the Bakrie group, which placed it under the management of Le Meridien. (Reuters, November 9)

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he Export Promotion Bureau (Export Promotion Bureau) has received a list of Joint ventures allots from the government of Uzbekistan for foreign partners. According to Export Promotion Bureau here on Saturday, this list was handed over to Pakistani Ambassador in Tashkent during his recent visit to Nukus region of Uzbekistan on the invitation of Uzbek government. These possible joint ventures are in the field of export oriented industries.

Interested parties can see the list at Export Promotion Bureau Karachi and Lahore offices. They can also contact Commercial Section of Pakistani Embassy in Tashkent on the following address: Ilyas Ghauri, Commercial Secretary, Embassy of Pakistan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Tel: 998-712-481219, Fax: 998-71-1446478. E-mail: Commdiv@online.ru.-APP (Associated Press of Pakistan, November 12)

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nvestigation is under way into a series of terrorist acts conducted in Tashkent several months ago. New and unexpected facts are popping up at a trial that is currently taking place in Tashkent. One of the defendants has said that he was trained at field commander Khattab's camp in Chechnya.

A trial of 12 people charged with grave crimes is under way in Tashkent. They are accused of intentional murder, terrorism, instigating ethnic and religious strife, an attempt on the president's life and conspiracy to seize power.

Only three of these people are present at the court. The others are hiding from prosecution outside Uzbekistan. They are being tried in absentia, but each of them has been provided with a lawyer.

In the course of more than six months, investigators interrogated 15,000 witnesses and those who suffered from the blasts. This number includes those who survived the act of terrorism in Tashkent in February 2000. Sixteen people died and 128 were injured in that blast.

The court questioned Ulughbek Mahmudov today. He said that he had been trained at Khattab's camp in Chechnya. He went there to study Islam. Mahmudov knows many prominent Chechen commanders very well. He thinks that those who conducted acts of terrorism in Uzbekistan had been trained by Arab instructors in Chechnya. Mahmudov repents of what he has done.

Mahmudov: "I have never thought that behind this battle there are mothers' tears. I have never realized this. But when I saw mothers' tears myself, I realized that it was a wrong path to follow."

The trial is being covered by the Uzbek media, so local residents are well-informed. The court will pass a sentence after all the defendants have been questioned. Most observers say it may turn out to be very severe. (Russian NTV, November 11)

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zbekistan's defense minister expressed regret Friday about people wandering into minefields on his country's border with Tajikistan -- but said mines were needed against Islamic rebels. Three Tajik men were seriously injured Nov. 2 when they went into forested hill areas to gather firewood, and three women were hurt the day before along the same stretch of border in the northern Isfara region of Tajikistan.

"We have information that citizens of Tajikistan were killed or injured by mine explosions," said Defense Minister Kodyr Gulomov at a news conference in the Uzbek capital Tashkent. "We express our deepest regret that it has happened."

"The problem is that we have organized numerous meetings with Tajik officials and they are all well aware of the mined areas. All these areas have been marked and carry warning signs."

"And it seems to us that both the Tajik authorities and the border guards must be more vigilant." He called the mining "an emergency measure."

The Uzbek military placed mines on the border in August to try to prevent Islamic militants from crossing into Uzbekistan. But much of the border remains unmarked from Soviet times, when Tajikistan and Uzbekistan were part of the same country, and civilians freely crossed the border to see relatives or let sheep graze. The latest injuries came on top of 15 civilians killed by mines on the border in recent months, say Tajik officials, who denounce Uzbekistan's decision to lay the mines.

Authorities in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and nearby Kyrgyzstan have been fighting Islamic insurgents who have gathered in the area where the countries' borders meet. The rebels are said to want to carve out an independent, Islamic state in Central Asia. (AP, November 11)

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erman businessmen plan to invest 250m dollars in a joint project with Uzbekistan to build a major textiles factory in the eastern Uzbek town of Namangan, the Uzbek newspaper 'Khalq Sozi' reported on 10th November.

The factory has been founded and construction will soon begin. Once completed, the factory will operate at an annual production capacity of 22,620 tonnes of yarn, and about 10,000 jobs will be created, the newspaper report said, adding that it will also export part of its output.

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