From: Justin Burke (JBurke@sorosny.org)
Date: Thu Nov 30 2000 - 09:35:44 EST
Uzbek soil will never be used for air strikes against neighbours - official
Excerpts from report by Uzbek TV on 29th November
[Presenter] Another news conference took place today at the Uzbek
president's press service. Our correspondent Komiljon Shamsiddinov reports
on it.
[Correspondent] [passage omitted: the secretary of the National Security
Council, Mirakbar Rahmonqulov, and Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Komilov
attended the conference]
The Uzbek government has paid attention to another event. There has been a
report published in the [Russian] newspaper 'Izvestiya'. The author of the
report, Mr Gennadiy Charodeyev, writes as though the Pentagon, that is, the
US armed forces, are planning to make use of Russia and the southern CIS
states to launch air strikes against terrorist camps in Afghanistan, and as
though [the Uzbek capital] Tashkent, [the Kyrgyz capital] Bishkek and [the
Kazakh capital] Astana have agreed to this suggestion, while Russia has not
yet replied.
[Secretary of the National Security Council, Mirakbar Rahmonqulov,
captioned, in Russian with Uzbek translation overlaid] As an official who
is authorised to make official statements on behalf of the Uzbek
government, I must say that this provocative report is aimed at making
relations between states, above all between Uzbekistan and the USA,
difficult. Uzbekistan has never had talks with any state on this issue. The
territory of our state will never be a place from which strikes will be
launched against our neighbours.
[Passage to end omitted: journalists received detailed answers to the other
questions they asked]
Source: Uzbek Television second channel, Tashkent, in Uzbek 1400 gmt 29 Nov
00
BBC
|
