Central Asia dilemma spurs US talk on reviving Uzbek ties

The Financial Times May 18 Recent moves by the great powers in central Asia are beginning to resemble the ancient Chinese board game of Go, where the object is to gain territory by encirclement. Meanwhile, the Bush adm in istration's drive to shore up its weakening position in the region has led to a fierce internal debate on the merits of trying to rebuild broken links with Uzbekistan, the linchpin of central Asia. The discussion has intensified this month with the first anniversary of mass killings that occurred in the eastern Uzbek town of Andijan. Those events, still hotly disputed by the Uzbek authorities, led to a breakdown in relations between Tashkent and Washington and the expulsion of US forces from Khanabad, their most important base in central Asia outside Afghanistan. Now vice-president Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, are said by officials and analysts to favour an attempt to reach out to President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, for purely strategic reasons. The Uzbek government's appalling human rights record - one dissident is reported to have been boiled to death - and its repression of civic organisations make it difficult for the Bush administration to contemplate a rapprochement with Mr Karimov, who was thanked in the White House in 2002 for his help in fighting al Qaeda. But the sense that Russia and China have been quick to capitalise on the US departure, and what Mr Rumsfeld described in frequent visits as Uzbekistan's excellent co-operation in the war on terror", make it too important to be ignored. Its strategic position was underscored this month when, according to Lieutenant Colonel Kurt Meppen, a former Pentagon official, a Russian delegation visited Tashkent even as Mr Cheney was in Kazakhstan to cement military and energy ties. Russia's objective was to ensure that Uzbekistan would not let its territory be a transit route for a gas pipeline from Turk menistan to China. Col Meppen, speaking at the US Institute of Peace, said the administration was debating whether to take baby steps to gain traction" in Uzbekistan and wrestling over the extent to which morality should influence foreign policy. The Hudson Institute, a conservative think-tank, heightened the controversy this week by airing a video prepared by the Uzbek government that sets out its version of what happened in Andijan - that it was a planned uprising by Islamist militants, not a peaceful protest by unarmed civilians.The Uzbek government insists 187 people were killed, including 31 members of the security forces, 94 terrorists and some 60 civilians. Human rights groups and the State Department maintain that Uzbek special forces killed hundreds" of unarmed civilians after an initial raid by armed men on a prison. Fred Starr, the chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute of Johns Hopkins University, introduced the video and sharply criticised think-tanks, journalists and the CIA, arguing that research backed up the death toll claimed by the Uzbek authorities and that evidence of a planned jihad, or holy war, was virtually overwhelming". One State Department official, who asked not to be named, dismissed the accusations. We see no reason to revise our assessment of what happened," he said.