But last month, the president's 29-year-old daughter, Gulnora Karimova-Maqsudi, separated from her husband, Mansur Maqsudi, 34, president of Coke's local bottling company. And since then, the cola giant's fortunes in Uzbekistan have abruptly changed.

Tax inspectors, fire inspectors, customs inspectors, and even an antinarcotics official, have descended on Coke's main bottling plant in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent. A week ago, authorities detained the bottling company's local general manager for 24 hours, while investigators tore through his office and that of the manager of the Maqsudi family's trading company in Tashkent, according to officials with the two companies.

Government investigators have taken away piles of documents from the companies and questioned about 10 current and former employees of the bottling concern, company officials said. The authorities also have temporarily detained some local Coke truck drivers and verbally harassed some merchants selling the soft drink, bottling company officials added. The Tashkent offices of Coca-Cola itself, a separate entity from the bottler, have been undisturbed.

Coke officials at the company's Atlanta headquarters are trying to be diplomatic, stressing their desire to cooperate with the sudden, sweeping investigation. It remains to be seen whether the Uzbek government comes up with evidence of wrongdoing, but the Maqsudi family has already concluded that something else is driving the government's behavior.

"You have a powerful [woman] who, rather than following traditional divorce proceedings in court, is exerting her power in government," said Patrizia Zita, a family friend and New Jersey public-relations executive to whom the Maqsudis have referred all questions.

Mansur Maqsudi, who lives in New Jersey, where his family's trading company has an office, declined to comment. Ms. Karimova-Maqsudi, who had been living in New Jersey with her husband and two children until shortly before the separation, couldn't be reached for comment.

Officials with the Uzbek Foreign Ministry and state news agency, which serves as the official conduit for all press inquiries, didn't respond to more than a dozen requests for comment on the government investigation and the status of the Maqsudi-Karimova marriage. In private conversations with foreign diplomats, Uzbek officials have strongly denied the investigation has any connection to Mr. Maqsudi's relationship with the president's daughter, according to the diplomats.

However it is resolved, Coke's predicament illustrates the route to success that many local and foreign businesses have taken in the former Soviet Union -- a partnership with top government officials or people close to them. And if there is indeed a connection between the Maqsudi-Karimova separation and the government investigation, Coke's experience also demonstrates one potential peril of that strategy.

Not long after the 1991 Maqsudi-Karimova marriage, Mr. Maqsudi and his older brother, Fareed, approached Coca-Cola, offering to bottle the company's products in Uzbekistan. Coke at the time considered the possibility that a partnership with an in-law of the top Uzbek leader could be risky, according to a person close to the company.

But that worry was outweighed by the company's eagerness to establish itself in a region long known as a stronghold of rival PepsiCo Inc. With 25 million people, Uzbekistan is the largest nation in Central Asia, although it is poor, and its cotton- and gold-based economy has been declining. Critics say that President Karimov's brutal crackdown against alleged Muslim extremists has led to a broadened insurgency by guerrillas based in Afghanistan. The Maqsudis, ethnic Uzbeks who had emigrated to the U.S. from Afghanistan, are unusual in having both substantial capital and an intimate knowledge of this dicey market.

Apart from their Uzbek interests, the brothers operated a family electronics-export company in Manhattan. After their wedding in Tashkent, Mansur Maqsudi and his bride had flown to a reception in New York for their American friends, according to the family spokeswoman, Ms. Zita.

Coke and the Maqsudis formed a joint venture in 1994, investing about $1.7 million each. Mansur Maqsudi was named president of the new company, Coca-Cola Bottlers Uzbekistan. Through the family-owned Roz Trading Group Ltd., the Maqsudis eventually acquired a controlling 55% share of the venture, with Coke owning the rest.

Ahmet Bozer, president of Coca-Cola's Eurasian division, said Coke never received any special favors because of its ties to the president's family. "The relationship with the government has been kept at arm's length and has always been pure," he said.

The new venture was bad news for Pepsi, though. The Uzbek government ended a multiyear relationship with the Coke rival in 1994 and gave Coke access to the only big bottling plant in Tashkent that met the American companies' standards. Coke quickly became a consumer hit with Uzbeks, and Pepsi soon ceased production in the country. A Pepsi spokesman declined to comment.

Since 1994, Coca-Cola has invested more than $100 million in Uzbekistan, making it one of the country's largest foreign investors. Coke and other Coca-Cola soft drinks, such as Fanta, Sprite and an apple-flavored version of Fresca, appeared on store shelves there. The bottler, run day-to-day by Maqsudi- employed managers, expanded production to three plants.

In 1998, Ms. Karimova-Maqsudi entered a masters-degree program in Central Asian studies at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., while her husband simultaneously enrolled at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Described as glamorous and intelligent by former classmates, Ms. Karimova-Maqsudi encountered skepticism on the generally liberal Ivy League campus about her father's human-rights and political policies. "She is very savvy" and skillfully defended those policies, said one classmate, Jonathan Phillips.

At some point, the marriage hit the rocks. The couple officially separated in July, according to Ms. Zita, the family spokeswoman.

A few days after word of the separation spread in Tashkent, a government official there telephoned the bottling company to postpone a concert of foreign and local entertainers the company had planned to sponsor in early September, bottling-company managers said. Police also began stopping Coca-Cola trucks for no apparent reason, the company officials said.

Then, last Monday at about 6 p.m., men from the Uzbek intelligence and security agency, known as the SNB, arrived at the Maqsudis' Roz Trading office in Tashkent and announced there would be a search, according to company officials. Four hours later, the security men returned with an official letter, authorizing an examination of the company's books and the confiscation of company property. The SNB took away most of the office's 20 computers, said a company official who witnessed the scene.

Meanwhile, a small army of government officials arrived at the main bottling plant in another part of Tashkent. Tax inspectors led the plant's top two managers away. Other inspectors carted off files from the company's finance, procurement and purchasing departments, according to executives who were there.

Managers of the two companies telephoned the U.S. and British embassies. (Roz Trading is registered in the Cayman Islands, a British colony.) Company employees also alerted the Maqsudi brothers, who from their Montville, N.J., office launched a lobbying blitz. The Maqsudis contacted local congressmen and the State Department.

Separately, a Coke lobbyist in Washington met with the Uzbek ambassador to the U.S., Shavkat Khamrakulov, and phoned the State and Commerce departments. Last Tuesday, U.S. diplomats in Tashkent delivered a message to the Uzbekistan Foreign Ministry that the U.S. was concerned about the situation and expected the government not to hold any of the detainees for long periods, according to people familiar with the situation.

Within 36 hours of being detained, the Maqsudi employees were released. But the scrutiny continued. An officer with the national antinarcotics force even examined the cola syrup at the plant, suggesting that he was looking for some kind of drug contamination, company officials said. Managers shut down production for about 24 hours at one point, having decided they couldn't operate under such conditions.

By Friday, production had resumed, and the multifaceted inspection was continuing during normal working hours. At the Roz Trading office in Tashkent, though, the government men left the company's ransacked computers in a heap. One senior Maqsudi employee said the officials told him they were conducting a criminal investigation but weren't more specific.

Coca-Cola officials said the American company in recent days has received a letter from Uzbek tax authorities, officially informing Coke that the bottler's books would be audited for evidence of possible violations of law.

The Coke officials stressed their desire to accommodate the Uzbek probe. "Uzbekistan is an important country for us," said the company's Mr. Bozer. "We have a good relationship with the Uzbek government, and I don't see what has happened as taking away from that."

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Ten years ago, a statue of Lenin dominated the landscape on Uzbekistan's Red Square. Now the Lenin statue has been replaced with a gold globe whose most prominent feature is a map of Uzbekistan. On Thursday, cadets from a military college were marching through what is now Independence Square in preparation for the country's tenth anniversary celebration.

Uzbekistan, like many of the other republics of the former Soviet Union, declared its independence shortly after the failed coup, in August of 1991, that led to end of the Soviet Union.

On September 1, the country will observe ten years of independence, and President Islam Karimov is going all-out in preparing for the country's birthday celebration.

Teams of workers are laboring around the clock to finish eight bridges in different parts of the city. Old buildings have been torn down in order to make way for parks. Lots now filled with bulldozers and dirt will soon be planted with grass and flowers. And, almost every streetlight and building in Tashkent is decorated with a green, white, and blue Uzbek flag or a banner congratulating the country on its anniversary.

The headline in one newspaper proclaims "Ten years: on the road to a great future!"

More than 5,000 girls from around Uzbekistan were brought to Tashkent last month to practice the dance they will do at the anniversary festivities.

Feruza Koshakova, a 17-year-old student, is delighted by the celebrations. She says that it is Uzbekistan's independence day and for every country, independence day is important. And besides, she says, it is quite fun and interesting.

But not everyone in Uzbekistan is celebrating, especially those who are poor, and there are many of them. Most people make less than $15 a month and pensioners receive about $3 a month from the state. One Uzbek man who sells paintings to tourists in Tashkent criticized how much the government is spending on celebrations. He says Uzbekistan is still a young nation and the money that is being spent on the celebrations is simply too much. He also criticized the government for closing off the roads into Tashkent and said the celebrations more closely resemble a military operation than a celebration for the people.

The man refused to give his name. Many people are hesitant to talk with journalists or say anything critical about the country's president.

The Uzbek president has been criticized by international human rights organizations for cracking down on free speech and having his political opponents arrested.

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Чтобы понять, какое значение придают к замене на конвейере «УзДЭУавто» Tico на Matiz, в Узбекистане достаточно того факта, что в день появления на свет первой машины на заводе присутствовал сам президент Узбекистана Ислам Каримов. Понять, узбеков можно – Matiz стал первой новой моделью, освоенной заводом с момента открытия в 1997 году. Тогда «УзДЭУавто» начал выпускать три модели: хорошо знакомую россиянам Nexia, малолитражку Tico и микроавтобус Damas. Потом был кризис 98-ого года, падение продаж, разорение самого Daewoo. Все три модели успешно покинули конвейер головного корейского завода, а в Узбекистане их продолжали собирать. Именно поэтому обновление модельного ряда для узбекского завода – показатель того, что у предприятия наступают хорошие времена. И это, по мнению руководства завода, прежде всего должна почувствовать Россия, как главный потребитель продукции «УзДЭУавто».

За время своего существования «УзДЭУавто» произвел 250 тысяч автомобилей, из которых 51 тысяч пошел на экспорт, большинство в Россию. Понятно, что наибольшей популярностью пользовалась Nexia. Tico, стоящий от комплектации от 4 до 4,4 тысяч долларов, россияне не ценили. На смену Tico теперь приходит Matiz. Новая модель в отличие от своей предшественницы напоминает, скорее, не серпуховскую «Оку», а уменьшенную копию штутгартского «Мерседеса» класса А. Matiz на 10 сантиметров длиннее и шире Tico – это значит, что в салоне теперь будет существенно просторней. Движок «вырос» на 10 «лошадей» - с 41 до 51 л.с. В общем, Matiz на фоне своей предшественницы выглядит весьма привлекательно. Но вот убедит ли это россиян в том, что этот автомобиль стоит покупать – вопрос спорный.

В проект по выпуску Daewoo Matiz было вложено, по оценкам специалистов, до 42 млн долларов – рассчитан он на производство 60 тысяч машин в год. Несмотря на то, что сами представители компании в разговоре с корреспондентом «Газеты.Ru» отказались делать какие-либо заявления о перспективах этой машины на российском рынке, тот факт, что первая экспортная партия Matiz уйдет именно к нам, говорит сам за себя. И хотя на российском рынке иностранные малолитражки никогда особой популярностью не пользовались, Daewoo, судя по всему, решила исправить эту досадную оплошность. «Пока еще рано говорить, сколько Matiz будет стоить в России и каковы будут размеры поставок, компания хорошо понимает, что это будет или второй автомобиль в семье – для женщины, или для молодежи», - заявили корреспонденту «Газеты.Ru» в российском представительстве Daewoo. В Европе эта машина стоит порядка 6 тысяч долларов, в России же – редкий случай – будет дешевле. Ориентировочно Matiz не будет стоит дороже $5 тысяч.

Как известно, Matiz, появившийся в Европе 2 года назад, оказался крайне кстати в бывших странах соцлагеря – по всей видимости, именно тогда там наступил момент, когда многие семьи смогли раскошелиться на второй автомобиль. Учитывая темпы отставания нашей страны в экономическом развитии, можно предположить, что когда полноценные партии Matiz окажутся на нашем рынке, перед формирующимся средним классом россиян встанет та же проблема. И тогда маленький и дешевый узбекско-корейский автомобильчик вполне может прийтись ко двору и в России.

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Current Daewoo-GM negotiations will be over no later than the end of next month, Chairman Lee Jong Dae said. They will be followed by talks on the actual sale of the company. Those talks might take two to three months, Lee said.

He said every measure is being taken to minimize the effect of the sale on UzDaewoo Auto, a joint venture between Daewoo and Uzbekistan based in Asaka in Uzbekistan's Andizhan region.

Lee said Daewoo runs a network abroad that comprises 10 manufacturing enterprises and 40 marketing organizations.

He was speaking at a news conference in Asaka after a ceremony to mark the start of mass production by UzDaewoo Auto of the fourth model of the Matiz-100 car.

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1. Martina Hingis (Switzerland)
2. Jennifer Capriati (U.S.)
3. Lindsay Davenport (U.S.)
4. Venus Williams (U.S.)
5. Kim Clijsters (Belgium)
6. Justine Henin (Belgium)
7. Monica Seles (U.S.)
8. Amelie Mauresmo (France)
9. Nathalie Tauziat (France)
10. Serena Williams (U.S.)
11. Elena Dementieva (Russia)
12. Meghann Shaughnessy (U.S.)
13. Amanda Coetzer (South Africa)
14. Jelena Dokic (Yugoslavia)
15. Magdalena Maleeva (Bulgaria)
16. Silvia Farina Elia (Italy)
17. Anke Huber (Germany)
18. Sandrine Testud (France)
19. Barbara Schett (Austria)
20. Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario (Spain)
21. Conchita Martinez (Spain)
22. Elena Likhovtseva (Russia)
23. Iroda Tulyaganova (Uzbekistan)

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"Если здесь не произойдет чуда, то работать западным компаниям скоро будет просто невозможно", - заявили в офисе Lufthansa.

Немецкие самолеты прекратят курсировать по линии Ташкент-Франкфурт 30 октября, когда окончится летнее расписание. На этом маршруте с марта 1993 г. три раза в неделю летали лайнеры А-310.

Таким образом, в Ташкенте останется только офис грузового отделения немецкой авиакомпании "Люфтганза-Карго", заправляющий немецкие грузовые самолеты при полетах в Юго-Восточную Азию.

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За эти годы Асакинский завод, потенциальная мощность которого составляет 200 тыс. автомобилей в год, выпустил 250 тыс. автомобилей, 51 тыс. из которых была отправлена на экспорт. Основным покупателем легковых машин совместного предприятия является Россия.

Создание СП заложило основы развития в республике новой отрасли и позволило Узбекистану войти в число 28 государств - производителей автомобилей.

За пять лет существования отрасли создано около 30 новых предприятий и производственных мощностей, которые выпускают запасные части и комплектующие к автомобилям Асакинского завода. Благодаря этому, появились тысячи новых рабочих мест.

Как отметил на торжественном пуске в серию нового автомобиля президент Узбекистана Ислам Каримов, в стране появилась совершенно новая отрасль, целая инфраструктура, связанная с автомобилестроением.

В настоящее время СП "УзДЭУавто" совместно с британской компанией "МЕКС Коммодитис" работает над проектом экспорта автомобилей из Узбекистана на рынки Европы, Великобритании, а также в страны Британского Содружества.

Этот проект планируется осуществить в три этапа. Сначала британские партнеры намерены экспортировать автомобили в развивающиеся страны, а затем переключиться на рынки Европы и Америки. Для достижения этой цели планируется создание машин с двигателем, полностью отвечающим европейским стандартам экологии и безопасности.

Сейчас в тестовом центре "Авто Терминал" английского города Саутхэмптон проводятся испытания "Дамаса", "Нексии" и "Тико" для определения их соответствия стандартам ЕС. Кроме того, ведутся работы по созданию "Нексии" с правосторонним расположением руля.

В 2002 г. "МЕКС Коммодитис" намерена закупить около 6 тыс. автомобилей узбекского производства.

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A deputy director of Uzbekistan's Institute of Mineral Resources, Abdusattor Odilov, told the Uzbek television that the ore at the deposit contained a relatively high percentage of wolfram oxide: "The Sovutboy deposit contains a total of 4m tonnes of wolfram ore. Wolfram oxide makes up 1.1 per cent of the ore. The percentage in previously discovered deposits was about half this figure."

A feasibility study shows that 300,000 tonnes of wolfram can be extracted from the deposit annually for 15 years, the correspondent said, adding that further prospecting was under way at the Sarytov deposit, not far from Sovutboy. Odilov added: "Geologists are predicting that the Sarytov deposit will contain twice as much ore as Sovutboy. Studies of the Kyzylkum desert area are suggesting that it contains about 15-20 times as much ore as Sovutboy."

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A team has already been formed in [the Uzbek capital] Tashkent to contain the epidemic. Quarantine is being imposed in all [affected] settlements. Teams of medical workers are inspecting sources of drinking water and swimming ponds. Staff from public health inspection points on borders between Regions have been given strict instructions to prevent the spread of cholera beyond Tashkent Region, which borders Kazakhstan.

Prime Minister Otkir Sultonov has been put in charge of overseeing the situation. The Uzbek government's anti-epidemic emergency commission has already held a meeting.

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