Iran, Uzbekistan hit out at powers interference

The Turkish Weekly June 16 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad found common ground with Uzbek strongman Islam Karimov, warning at a regional meeting against interference by foreign powers, AFP reported. Ahmadinejad used the annual leaders' summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a forum anchored by China and Russia, to warn against "domineering powers" in the region. The fiery hardline president told the other leaders at the summit that deeper cooperation among SCO nations could help keep out unspecified foreign forces, in what appeared to be a reference to the United States. "(It) can ward off the threats of domineering powers to use their force against and interfere in the affairs of other states," he said in a prepared speech. Iran is an observer nation to the SCO, which groups China and Russia with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The participation of Iran, accused by the United States of seeking to develop nuclear weapons and of sponsoring terrorism, in the SCO has caused consternation in Washington. "It strikes me as strange that one would want to bring into an organization that says it's against terrorism... one of the leading terrorist nations in the world -- Iran," US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said this month. Beijing and Moscow, however, reject US claims that Tehran finances terrorism. Like Ahmadinejad, Uzbek President Islam Karimov has come under strong criticism from the United States for his anti-democratic leanings and he too made some pointed remarks Thursday on foreign interference in the region. "We see persistent effort to sow discord between countries of the region to push them into various geopolitical formations with the aim of using the situation in the region for their own strategic interests," Karimov said. Karimov has come under particularly strong criticism in the West for a crackdown on unarmed protestors in Andijan city in May 2005. Uzbek authorities say 187 people were killed in Andijan after government troops opened fire but witnesses and human rights groups say between 500 and 1,000 died. Washington joined in the criticism of the crackdown, leading to a dramatic worsening of relations between the United States and Uzbekistan. Tashkent closed a US military base in Uzbekistan last November that had been a strategic foothold for Washington in Central Asia. SCO host China has repeatedly said the organization was not targetted at any third party. Nevertheless, Thursday's comments from Ahmadinejad and Karimov may only have heightened concerns in Washington that the SCO is increasingly becoming a counterbalance to US influence in the region. The leaders of the SCO member nations also emphasized in a joint declaration that political systems in the region should not be changed just because one nation may not like them. "Differences in cultural traditions, political and social systems, values and models of development formed in the course of history should not be taken as pretexts to interfere in other countries' internal affairs," the joint declaration said.