BISHKEK, March 22: Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, facing violent protests in the south over an election the opposition says was rigged, on Tuesday defiantly backed the poll as legitimate but ruled out using force to end the unrest. Mr Akayev broke silence over the protests, in which opposition supporters have seized control of two southern towns in the ex-Soviet Central Asian country, telling newly elected deputies they were part of a body of “high and indisputable legitimacy”.
But protesters ruling the country’s second city of Osh, which was being patrolled by local men in red arm-bands, said the president had to resign, pledging to govern independently from the capital Bishkek until he did so.
Mr Akayev refused to quit but pledged not to use force to end the protests, which he said were organized by unspecified foreign powers to provoke large-scale force in response.
“All this is designed to provoke the government into using massive use of force. I want to state firmly that I, as a president, will never resort to such steps,” he said. Opposition protests were prompted by their leaders being routed in parliamentary polls that foreign observers said were flawed. Protesters think Mr Akayev will use his new majority to stay in power beyond his legal last term which ends in October.
“We have a clear goal — to get Akayev out of the president’s office,” said Anvar Artykov, now de facto governor of much of impoverished southern Kyrgyzstan as he stubbed out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.
“We are not working with the Bishkek government ... All problems in the city are now dealt with by us,” he said, sitting in the Osh administrative headquarters.
BAZAARS QUIET: The bazaars and tea houses of Osh, a dusty low-rise city near the Uzbek border which was abandoned by uniformed police after protesters attacked them with petrol bombs and sticks, were quieter than usual on Tuesday but still open.
Mass protests have been confined to Osh and nearby regions also inhabited by an ethnic cocktail of Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kyrgyz. Southern Kyrgyzstan saw ethnic clashes in the early 1990s in which hundreds of people were killed.
There was plenty of popular support for the opposition there and in neighbouring Jalal Abad, also under rebel control. But Mr Akayev ruled out agreeing to the protesters’ key demand and ending his 14-year rule of his homeland, which borders China and lies in an energy-rich region where Washington and Moscow vie for influence. Both powers have air bases near Bishkek.
“The people who set themselves up as leaders of the opposition cannot formulate acceptable conditions for talks,” he said in a televised speech mocking the opposition.
“As far as my resignation is concerned, a decision on this is not to be taken by rallies ... this can be taken only by the people or parliament.”—Reuters
