| June 26-July 3, 1999 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Security Council focuses on army reform and border protection
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|  zbek President Islam Karimov on
Wednesday chaired a meeting of the National Security Council to discuss the
implementation of government decisions concerning the country's security and
the reorganisation of the army and border troops, an informed source said.
He stressed that special attention was paid to the creation of mobile and
well-equipped units capable of safeguarding peace and calm in the country.
The meeting participants also discussed ways to improve territorial troop
control, ensure closer interaction between the army and law enforcement
agencies, and to provide better deployment and every-day conditions for the
troops.
A good deal of attention was given to the training and re- training of servicemen
and protection of the border from a possible penetration by subversive or
terrorist groups and other criminal acts.
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Bulgaria is important Balkan partner for Uzbekistan
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|  ulgarian ports of
Varna and Burgas can become the "sea gates"
on the way to Europe for Uzbekistan, Prime Minister
Ivan Kostov said.
On Thursday, Kostov met Uzbek parliament speaker
Erkin Khalilov, who is currently in Sofia on
an official visit.
Khalilov stressed that Bulgaria is one of the most
important Balkan countries for Uzbekistan
and the use of sea ports will be natural when a
trans-European transport corridor begins
operating.
Such plans are aimed in future and at present
Bulgaria is isolated from Western Europe because
many transport communications in Yugoslavia have
been destroyed by NATO bombings, and it
takes much time to reach the point through Romania.
And the trans-European transport corridor
is an ambitious project with unclear terms of its
implementation, and Sofia and Bucharest held
talks on what ports -- Varna, Burgas or Constance
-- should be "linked" this transport
corridor.
While in Sofia, the Uzbek delegation conferred with
parliament speaker Jordan Sokolov and
Vice-President Todor Kavaldzhiyev.
The Bulgarian prime minister is expected to pay a
visit to Uzbekistan before the end of the year.
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Uzbekistan strengthens self-defence with NATO assistance
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|  egional courses
to practice civil defence and civil
military cooperation opened in Tashkent on Tuesday.
The Uzbek Ministry for Emergency Situations told
Itar-Tass that the courses had been
organized in the framework of the " Partnership for
peace" programme jointly with the NATO
Directorate for planning and use of civil services
under conditions of emergencies, and the Chief
Headquarters of the Allied Forces of Europe.
The regional courses are attended by
representatives of 16 countries - NATO members and its
partners. During the courses which will
continue for several days, experts will deliver
lectures about civil defence planning and
operations conducted in emergency situations and
exchange experience with their Uzbek
colleagues.
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Uzbek foreign minister to attend OSCE Council session
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|  bdulaziz Kamilov, Uzbekistan's Foreign
Minister, arrives in Vienna on Wednesday to attend a session of the permanently
functioning Council of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE), an official in the Uzbekistan Foreign Ministry department of
information has told Itar-Tass.
At the session, Kamilov is to deliver a report on topical aspects of the
development of cooperation between Uzbekistan and the OSCE.
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France to invest over 1 billion francs in Uzbekistan
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|  rance will invest over one billion francs in its
projects in Uzbekistan this year, French Ambassador in Tashkent Jean-Claude
Richard said on Monday.
Richard told journalists that French investments in Uzbekistan grow every year.
While in 1994 they stood at 149 million francs, in 1998 they exceeded 800
million.
He noted that the major projects in Uzbekistan now are the construction of a
southern channel in the Golodnaya steppe, of a water-purification plant in
Muinak, of a chemical plant in Fergana and of a power plant in Navoi.
The ambassador said France will start supplying electric train engines this year. It
will deliver about 20 of them to Uzbekistan.
At the same time, France will continue to buy mostly Uzbek cotton.
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Marubeni, Mitsubishi in $70 mln. Uzbek gold ñontract
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| Japan's Mitsubishi Materials Corporation and
Marubeni Corp have signed a $70 million contract to upgrade facilities at
Uzbekistan's huge Muruntau open-pit gold mine, an Uzbek gold official said
Friday.
The two Japanese partners won the right to modernise the mine at a tender last
year, and the $70 million project would be the first of two stages, the total value
of which has been estimated at $120 million.
"The value of this contract is around $70 million," said Vali Istamov, an official at
the Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Plant (NGMK) which processes ore from
the mine.
"The project will be realised over 39 months from the moment of its coming into
force," he told Reuters.
The first stage of the agreement involves reconstructing the transportation system
at Muruntau and installing a major conveyor. A second conveyor to carry ore to
ground level would be built in the second construction phase.
Japan's Eximbank would issue credits to cover 85 percent of the cost of the
contract, with the remaining 15 percent coming from Marubeni credits, Istamov
said.
Officials in the former Soviet republic of 24 million say the Muruntau pit is the
world's largest open-cast gold mine.
Around 21 million tonnes of ore are extracted annually, and over 1,300 tonnes
of gold have been extracted from the field since development began in 1967.
The NGMK combine produced about 59 tonnes of gold in 1998, the bulk of the
country's output. NGMK is also Uzbekistan's sole uranium producer.
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Uzbeks sentence two to death for hostage incident
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| n Uzbek regional court has sentenced to
death two men and jailed 14 others for their role in a hostage-taking incident in
March, national television said late on Tuesday.
Nine people including bus passengers and security officials, died in the March
incident.
"Having studied all the documents and heard testimony from witnesses, the court
sentenced to death Khamro Khalilov and Timurbek Babadzhanov," the report
said.
The Khorezm regional court tried a total of 16 people, seven of whom were
given 20 year prison sentences in a judgement handed down on Tuesday.
The court ordered the rest to be jailed for terms ranging from nine to 19 years
and their property to be confiscated.
The men were found guilty of seizing a passenger bus near the Khorezm region
west of Tashkent, capital of the impoverished Central Asian country. Nine
people including two passengers were killed when security forces mounted a
rescue attempt.
The judgement came a week after a Supreme Court ruling sentencing to death
six people and jailing several others for their role in a series of bomb blasts
which killed 16 people in Tashkent earlier this year.
The Uzbek authorities sees both incidents as part of a pattern of unrest fomented
by hardline Islamists, whom it suspects of plotting to overthrow the government.
"These people are part of an armed criminal band which for several years has
indulged in activities aimed at destroying the territorial sovereignty of Uzbekistan
and transforming it into a dependent country under the flag of a caliphate," the
television report said.
The report alleged money obtained from armed raids had been used by the
terrorists to buy weapons and train young men in an Islamic university in Russia's
breakaway region of Chechnya.
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Uzbek plant revises gold Jv, eyes uranium project
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| zbekistan's Navoi Mining and
Metallurgical Plant (NGMK) is considering changing the terms of a proposed
gold mining project with Britain's Oxus Resources Corp because of low gold
prices, NGMK said on Monday.
The company also announced that it would soon set up a uranium mining joint
venture with French giant Cogema.
NGMK chief engineer Yevgeny Tolstov told journalists low prices for gold had
prompted the company to suggest changes to a gold mining project with Oxus.
"We cannot set up a joint venture when world prices are at their lowest," Tolstov
said. "So we have suggested a different approach -- that of underground
mining."
"Oxus has agreed to conduct a new feasibility study within the next six months,"
he added.
Under the original project Oxus and NGMK, the Central Asian nation's leading
gold producer, were to restructure a 1995 joint venture, Amantaitau Goldfields,
using open-pit methods. Project costs were estimated at $196 million.
Oxus had already in March submitted a pre-feasibility study for developing the
Amantaitau and Daugystau fields in the Kyzylkum desert. Reserves at the sites
are estimated at 300 tonnes of gold.
The fields were earlier to have been developed by Canada's Cameco Corp and
Britain's Lonrho Plc but the companies pulled out due to the falling gold prices.
But Tolstov said NGMK was considering upping its presence in the uranium
market because prices for the metal were expected to rise after 2000.
He said a joint venture agreement with Cogema was likely to be signed at the
end of the year. The project would have an annual production capacity of 1,000
tonnes of uranium with expected investments of "tens of millions of dollars".
NGMK, situated in the Kyzylkum desert 400 kilometers (280 miles) from the
Uzbek capital, Tashkent, is the country's only producer of uranium. It expects to
produce 2,200 tonnes of uranium in 1999, up from 2000 tonnes last year.
But gold, alongside cotton, provides the bulk of Uzbekistan's revenues. The
country is believed to produce about 80 tonnes of gold annually, of which
NGMK mines 90 percent.
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