| Submit your comments on this article |
| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Kyrgyz Opposition Names President, Russia Supports |
| 2005-03-25 |
| BISHKEK (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan's opposition, a day after snatching power in a lightning coup in the ex-Soviet state, on Friday named a new acting president and won almost immediate -- and vital -- support from Russia. The government of veteran President Askar Akayev, who has fled, collapsed on Thursday after thousands of protesters stormed the main administration building in Bishkek, dragging the Central Asian city into an orgy of looting. "God forbid anybody would have to have such a revolution," Felix Kulov, freed from jail by supporters on Thursday and appointed acting interior minister, told state television. "It was a rampage of looting, just like in Iraq." At least one man was shot dead during the looting overnight and 31 police officers were wounded, some seriously, he said. Gunshots rang out throughout the night in the city of 800,000. The unrest in the capital Bishkek followed violent protests earlier in the week in the poorer south. The Kyrgyz ambassador to the United States called it a coup. "This ... is an anti-constitutional coup," Baktybek Adrisaev told CNN. But Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was ready to work with the Kyrgyz opposition and offered refuge in Russia to Akayev, who is thought to have fled abroad, possibly to neighboring Kazakhstan. "We know these people (the opposition) pretty well and they have done quite a lot to establish good relations between Russia and Kyrgyzstan," Putin told reporters on a visit to Armenia. In Bishkek, broken glass and naked mannequins ripped from shop windows littered the streets after a night of looting. The situation remained tense on Friday. "We had three men guarding the store but there was a crowd of about 100 people," said Oleg Ivanchenko, head of security at one shop. "They starting throwing stones at the windows and told us if we didn't get out they'd smash us up along with the shop ... They took everything away. I called the police but there was no answer." THIRD EX-SOVIET REVOLUTION Impoverished Kyrgyzstan becomes the third ex-Soviet state in two years, after Georgia and Ukraine, where a revolt after disputed elections has ousted the entrenched leadership. Only Kyrgyzstan's revolution was violent and only its opposition government immediately won the backing of Moscow which once ruled the region. And, unlike the new leaders in Georgia and Ukraine who have irked Moscow, Kyrgyzstan's opposition has shown no interest in shifting Westwards away from Russian influence. Akayev, by the standards of the autocratic rulers who dominate Central Asia, was relatively liberal but failed to lift the population of 5 million out of poverty. Most get by on a dollar a day. It was that, analysts say, which underpinned the protests against the results of parliamentary elections in February and March in which the opposition was routed and which international observers said were flawed. Opposition leader Kurmanbek Bakiev, who played a central role in the protests that brought down Akayev, said he had been named acting president. "Parliament today appointed me prime minister and gave me the functions of president," he told supporters in Bishkek. Analysts say there is little love lost between the key opposition leaders, with Kulov, freed from jail by protesters on Thursday, seen as more popular than Bakiev. Most of the opposition leaders were themselves top officials at some time during Akayev's 14-year rule. Kulov was once police chief and head of the National Security Ministry, successor to the Soviet-era KGB. It was during Bakiev's premiership, which ended in 2002, that the U.S. air force was allowed to set up a base near the capital Bishkek and Kulov was imprisoned for abuse of power and theft. "For their own credibility they need to make sure they control law and order and what happened yesterday doesn't just look like a sudden takeover," one Western diplomat said. He said that the new leaders needed to continue the planned reforms of the previous government. |
| Posted by:Steve |