Associated Press
August 31

As Uzbekistan marked 11 years of independence Saturday, its president said the former Soviet republic had achieved a new level of international prestige.

"Uzbekistan's international prestige has reached an unprecedented level — a level that was unthinkable 11 years ago," President Islam Karimov told selected guests gathered in the capital's Independence Square to watch a colorful concert behind several police cordons.

But opposition activists warned that public frustration with the country's lack of economic and democratic progress may soon reach a boiling point.

"We have nothing to celebrate. It is a feast amid plague," Iskander Khudayberganov, director of the Democratic Initiatives Center, said of Saturday's festivities.

Uzbekistan's key role in the U.S.-led military operation in nearby Afghanistan rapidly improved its relations with the West.

Karimov, the first of the Central Asian leaders to offer airspace and territory for anti-terrorism operations in Afghanistan, this year secured a strategic partnership deal with the United States and restored relations with the International Monetary Fund that had been halted due to the lack of market reforms.

Signaling an apparent relaxation of his authoritarian rule, Karimov on Thursday called for guarantees of media freedom, freedom of political activity, independence for courts and economic liberalization.

But human rights groups say thousands of people have been jailed for their religious beliefs by the staunchly secular government, which says the arrests are aimed at fighting Islamic extremism.

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