Reuters
December 26

Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov announced on Thursday the arrest of a leading opponent, Boris Shikhmuradov, who stands accused of masterminding a coup attempt last month.

Niyazov broke the news to diplomats outside his gold-domed presidential palace, its palm trees dusted with rare snow, as they awaited Pakistani and Afghan leaders who are to sign an important gas pipeline deal.

Presidential spokesman Serdar Durdiyev said Shikhmuradov, a former foreign minister, had been detained inside the Central Asian republic bordering Afghanistan and Iran. He gave no further details.

Shikhmuradov is the main suspect in a November 25 assassination bid against Niyazov, whose motorcade was raked with gunfire as it moved through Ashgabat. Niyazov was unhurt.

Turkmenistan's prosecutor general confirmed on state television that Shikhmuradov had been detained along with an exiled Turkmen official. She did not say how they were detained.

"The terrorist leader of the bandit group, traitor to his motherland, organizer of the assassination attempt on the president of Turkmenistan, violator of the constitution of Turkmenistan and thief has been detained along with his supporter (Sapar) Yklymov," Gurbanbibi Atadzhanova said.

Yklymov is a former deputy agriculture minister last known to be living in Sweden. There has been no indication that Yklymov, who has denied any connection with the assassination bid, has returned to Turkmenistan.

The prosecutor general said more details would be made known in parliament on Monday.

REFUSED TO RETURN HOME

Shikmuradov was sent to China after eight years as foreign minister but in October 2001 was recalled to Ashgabat. He refused to return and moved to Moscow, where he became an outspoken critic of Niyazov.

Referred to as Turkmenbashi (Father of the Turkmen), Niyazov is lionized in the media and portraits and statues of him appear throughout the capital. He blamed the attack on a network of mercenaries, including from Turkey and neighboring Russia.

Russia has tense relations with the former Soviet republic, and sees Niyazov as obstructing plans to share the Caspian Sea's vast mineral wealth on their borders. Turkmenistan gave Uzbekistan's ambassador 24 hours to leave last weekend, accusing him of aiding those allegedly behind the bid to kill Niyazov.

Like neighboring Uzbekistan, largely desert Turkmenistan is a cotton producer and disputes over rights to water in a river that forms their border have raised tensions.

Human rights activists say more than 100 people have been arrested following the assassination bid. The United States on Monday warned its nationals against travel to the republic.

Shikhmuradov's arrest was announced as Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali arrived to sign a $2.5 billion gas pipeline deal.

The three men are due on Friday to sign a framework agreement to build a 1,400-km (875-mile) pipeline to Pakistan, half of which would run via Afghanistan. Afghan officials say it will carry around 15 billion cubic meters of gas a year.

Some Western investors doubt the project's viability given that swathes of Afghanistan remain controlled by warlords, and worry about the solvency of Pakistani natural gas consumers.

Turkmenistan has the world's third-largest natural gas reserves but current exports are almost exclusively directed at former Soviet states supplied via pipelines owned by Russia.

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