Agence France Presse
October 6

Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov and his Uzbek counterpart Islam Karimov signed an accord late Saturday demarcating the border between the two Central Asian states, officials said.

Some 86 percent of the 1,283-kilometer (750-mile) border was defined, with four areas in the southern Tajik region of Sogd still in dispute, Karimov told reporters. The border, which had not previously been clearly defined by the two former Soviet republics, was mined last year in an attempt to stave off Islamic rebels.

Twenty five Tajik civilians have been killed by landmine blasts since then.

Uzbek officials have said that members of the fundamentalist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan are sheltering in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and often attempt to travel between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan via Tajikistan.

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