BISHKEK, March 25, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Experts Friday, March 25, said Kyrgyzstan is not likely to fall into the hands of extremist groups such as Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organization, following the collapse of the Kyrgyz regime in the Central Asian country under the mass people protests.

They also stressed that “terror suspects” taking refuge in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries are not expected to establish bases in the former Soviet republic or even try to win over its Muslim citizens.

“Why would they give up Waziristan, the northern border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and go to Kyrgyzstan?” Alex Vatenka, the Eurasia Editor at Jane’s Sentinel Security Assessments, told Agence France Presse (AFP) Friday.

“Unless that area becomes totally unavailable to them, why would they go to totally new territory where you don’t have the kind of connections with the clans and the warlords they've had in the past?” he asked.

Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev fled the impoverished mountainous country that he has ruled for nearly 15 years after hundreds of opposition supporters had flooded the nation’s seat of government as riot police abandoned their posts around the compound in the center of the capital.

The political tension has flared up in the majority-Muslim republic after massive demonstrations by the opposition, mostly in the south of the country, to protest results of the March 13 parliamentary elections.

The opposition charged that the vote was rigged by Akayev’s administration in order to pack the assembly with his supporters ahead of presidential elections in October.

The opposition’s presence in the 75-member parliament was nearly wiped out, while his older daughter and son both won seats.

“It's very hard to see the Islamic forces actually playing a substantial role,” Antonenko said.

Vatenka also stressed that the former Soviet republic doesn’t have the widespread conditions to breed “extremist” ideologies embraced by Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda, unlike in neighboring Uzbekistan.

“The Kyrgyz, being nomadic, don’t have ties to mosques, mullahs and so on. The Uzbeks sitting there in Bukhara, in Tashkent and so on, they do listen to the mullahs,” Vatenka said.

“If you do find radical Islamism in Kyrgyzstan, it’s not among ethnic Kyrgyz, it’s among ethnic Uzbeks who live in Kyrgyzstan who make up 15 percent of the population and who live in the southwest of the country bordering Uzbekistan.”

Oksana Antonenko, a specialist at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), agreed.

“But it’s very hard to see the Islamic forces actually playing a substantial role. I don't believe that they are in any way leading that opposition,” Antonenko said.

Antonenko also doubted that Hizb-u-Tahrir, which is the only organized Islamic group in the country with declared political ambitions, would become a “unified force” in the central Asian country following the collapse of the Kyrgyz government.

She, however, said that with a possibly chaotic transition period, “it is possible that on some regional level, particularly in the southern part of Kyrgyzstan, some of those organizations will be able to recruit perhaps even more members.”

The Kyrgyz parliament named late Thursday Ishinbai Kadyrbekov, an opposition lawmaker, as interim president and asked the opposition to propose candidates for a new government.

“A decision has been made today with 44 votes for and two abstentions to name Ishinbai Kadyrbekov the new parliamentary speaker and acting president,” former speaker Abdygany Erkebayev told reporters during a break in a parliamentary session, reported Reuters.

As he was named acting president, Kadyrbekov told the parliament that “elections must take place within three months” under the existing constitution.

Responding to developments in the former Soviet republic, Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized what he termed the “illegal” overthrow in the country and offered asylum to the Kyrgyz president, whose whereabouts remain a mystery.

Putin, however said he was willing to co-operate with the new leadership in Bishkek.

Moscow controlled Kyrgyzstan in the former Soviet Union and still maintains a military base in the area, as does the United States.