'Pravda Vostoka' newspaper
November 19

Two Uzbek legal experts have warned against "abrupt" and "ill-considered" reforms in the Uzbekistan Prosecutor's Office. In an article published by the Uzbek newspaper Pravda Vostoka on 19 November, Doctor of law Mirzayusuf Rustamboyev and Yelena Nikiforova said that such reforms might "unbalance" the whole system of law-enforcement agencies. "Calls for the reorganization of the Prosecutor's Office, quite understandably, cause anxiety to us, legal experts. It is known that the legal system in our country (like in any other country) is a complicated mechanism, parts of which interweave, and work to ensure its normal functioning was carried out gradually for many decades. In our opinion, abrupt and ill-considered changes to one of the parts of this mechanism might unbalance the whole system of law-enforcement bodies," an article by Mirzayusuf Rustamboyev and Yelena Nikiforova says.

They also said that journalists reporting on legal issues should be familiar with the laws. "In our view journalists who report on legal issues must know the law," they said.

The authors wrote that changes would be made to the status and functions of the Prosecutor's Office. "Certain substantial changes in the functions of the Prosecutor's Office are just a matter of time. However one should not think that the further development of the Prosecutor's Office will be carried out only through reducing its functions," they said.

An article in Pravda Vostoka on 30 October by the paper's political commentator Sergey Yezhkov said that the country's Prosecutor's Office has "extremely wide functions" and that their powers should be limited.

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