Associated Press
December 12

ukhammat Salikh, an Uzbek dissident arrested on an Interpol warrant and released from prison on Tuesday, said Wednesday he hopes he will be allowed soon to return to Norway where he has lived in exile.

But he said he has no plans to seek Norwegian citizenship to avoid similar problems on future trips abroad.

"I will not ask for Norwegian citizenship, because I and my family, we still hope that one day we will be able to return to our homeland," Salikh told a news conference after meeting with President Vaclav Havel, himself a former dissident playwright.

Salikh was arrested Nov. 28 on an Interpol warrant after arriving at Prague's international airport. He arrived in Prague at the invitation of Radio Free Europe, which wanted to interview him.

He was subsequently ordered to remain in custody while Czech prosecutors investigate whether there are grounds to extradite him to Uzbekistan, where he is wanted on terrorism charges.

Salikh was sentenced in absentia last year to 15 1/2 years in prison by an Uzbek court for alleged involvement in bombings that killed 16 people in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, in 1999.

He has repeatedly denied his involvement in the bombings and warned that Uzbek authorities would kill him if he were forced to return to his home country.

He was released from custody on Tuesday and is awaiting at liberty the court's final verdict on whether he should be extradited to Uzbekistan.

Havel did not attend the news conference on Wednesday, but he has repeatedly said before he believes that Salikh "will not be extradited to the totalitarian leaders but will return to Norway."

Salikh said Wednesday that meeting Havel was "an honor not only to him but to all democrats who fight the totalitarian regimes in Central Asia."

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