MOSCOW, April 3: Kyrghyzstan’s ousted leader Askar Akayev announced on Sunday that he had agreed to resign, ending weeks of political uncertainty that followed the toppling of his Soviet-era regime in the key Central Asian nation. After three hours of talks with a Kyrgyz parliamentary delegation in Moscow, where he fled following his ouster, Akayev said the two sides had signed a four-point agreement.
“One of them — the president of the Kyrgyz republic announces his resignation and makes a personal statement,” Interfax quoted Akayev as saying.
“We decided to conduct the formal resignation ceremony tomorrow,” he said.
Akayev’s official resignation will remove the last doubts about the legitimacy of Kyrghyzstan’s new rulers and clears the way for a new presidential election, tentatively set for June 26.
Kyrghyzstan’s location on the western border of China and near Afghanistan’s northern edge has made it a strategically important nation in Central Asia, a region criss-crossed by international oil and gas pipelines.
Observers have warned that continuing unrest there could spread throughout the volatile region, which is dotted with areas under the influence of radical Islamic groups.
Both Russia, the nation’s traditional power broker, and the United States, which is vying for influence there with Moscow, have military bases in Kyrghyzstan and have carefully watched developments there.
Akayev, 60, fled Kyrghyzstan on March 24, after thousands of opposition demonstrators overran the main seat of government in the capital Bishkek, and is believed to have stayed near the Russian capital ever since.
The demonstrations were the culmination of weeks of simmering unrest over a parliamentary election, which the opposition had accused Akayev of rigging in order to stack the chamber with his supporters.
The speaker of Kyrghyzstan’s parliament, Omurbek Tekebayev, who headed the delegation for talks with Akayev, was due to meet later Sunday with the heads of Russia’s lower and upper house of parliaments, Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
“The meetings will discuss questions of further development of... Russo-Kyrgyz relations, as well as the Russian side offering help in stabilizing the situation in Kyrghyzstan,” it said.
Akayev said the other points of Sunday’s agreement include a parliamentary pledge to honour presidential security guarantees foreseen by Kyrgyz law, a decision by parliament to accept Akayev’s resignation and formally set a date for new presidential elections, and a pledge by both sides to honour the deal.
Kyrghyzstan’s northern neighbour Kazakhstan and Russia will act as guarantors of the agreement, he said.
Akayev, a trained physicist whose mandate was due to run out at the end of October, has ruled his impoverished nation of five million since 1990 and was considered the most liberal ruler in ex-Soviet Central Asia.
His support gradually slipped away, however, as his family and friends gained increasing influence in Kyrgyz economic and political life.
Two of his children, son Aydar and daughter Bermet, had won parliamentary seats in the legislative poll that eventually led to his ouster.—AFP
