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MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia is to send $30 million (33 million euros) worth of weapons to Uzbekistan to help the ex-Soviet republic combat an Islamic armed struggle in Central Asia, the business daily Vedomosti reported Wednesday.
According to the paper, which cited a source close to the negotiations, the defense firm Rosvooruzhenye, Russia's principal arms exporter, is preparing to sign a contract with Tashkent to deliver 50 armored vehicles and Mi-8 helicopters, as well as other weapons and communications systems, to the region. Muslims, allegedly trained in Afghan camps, have launched a series of incursions from Tajikistan into Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan since the beginning of August in an apparent bid to create an Islamic state in the mountainous region. According to Konstantin Makyenko, a Russian defense expert quoted by Vedomosti, "only a quarter of Uzbekistan's weapons systems are operational." The Uzbek army comprises 50,000 troops, 370 tanks, 273 armored and 326 transport vehicles, 49 heavy artillery units, as well as over 100 aircraft, including helicopters and fighter planes, the paper said. On Tuesday, Russia's deputy foreign minister Alexander Kosyukov said Moscow was prepared to give "all help necessary" to the anti-Islamist fight in Central Asia after holding talks here with his Uzbek counterpart, Abdusamat Khaidarov. But a senior defense official ruled out sending Russian troops or warplanes to repel Islamists in Uzbekistan. General Leonid Ivashov, head of the defense ministry's International Cooperation Division, confirmed that Uzbekistan had asked Russia for specialist arms needed in anti-terrorist operations such as night-vision instruments and sharpshooter rifles.
"We were taking measures to prevent possible terrorist acts, since the majority of the detained have been trained on rebel bases," said Russian Interior Ministry's spokesperson Captain Igor Pogosov. Some of the detainees have already participated in mining roads and preparing subversive acts in various towns of the breakaway Caucasian republic, Pogosov added. "Federal forces also confiscated a large amount of explosives, mainly taken from artillery shells, as well as detonators of every kind," Pogosov said. Russian army officials said Chechens plan to step up their subversive activity against federal forces and Chechnya's pro-Russian administration. On Tuesday, federal law enforcement prevented an explosion in a local administration building in Shali, southeast of the capital Grozny, and eliminated an explosive device on a railroad in the eastern Gudermes area, officials said. Unknown individuals managed to blow up an administrative building in the Gudermes region on Tuesday, but no one was hurt in the explosion, Gudermes commandant Alexander Pavlenko told Itar-Tass. In another development, the Russian State Duma's recently elected deputy for Chechnya met President Vladimir Putin late Tuesday to demand that he put an end to "arbitrary rule" in the war-torn republic. Putin "is perfectly aware of the situation in Chechnya and knows what needs to be done" to improve it, Aslanbek Aslakhanov said after his first meeting with the Russian president. He added that he had passed on a plea from his electorate who "are begging Putin to install in Chechnya a dictatorship of the constitution and laws of the Russian Federation, and put a stop to arbitrary rule and lawlessness." Aslakhanov has already denounced abuses committed by Russian soldiers in the breakaway Islamic republic, where a crackdown against Chechen forces is almost in its 11th month. |
Meanwhile, in Chechnya, the Itar-Tass news agency on Wednesday reported federal forces detained 102 people in the course of a four-day operation in the southwestern region of Urus-Martan.
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