I'm a little surprised no one's mentioned the current situation in Uzbekistan?

[Mr Grimsdale]

There's plenty of scope here for a good ding dong exhange between the usual suspects who post here.

Is the Uzbekistan government being supported by the US (and UK) because it is an ally in the War On Terror or is it because of oil and gas pipelines?

Come on chaps, fisticuffs.

[FORD]

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/maps/uz-map.gif

Well, by this map (courtesy of Agent Zimmerman's colleagues at Langley) it looks as though Turkmenistan (to the south) is the direct route for the infamous pipeline from Afghanistan to the Caspian Sea.

Still, the fact that the northeastern portion of this country looks like it was carved out of the other surrounding "stans", and the borders look completely weird compared to the rest of the country. I don't follow Eastern European politics very closely, but there was obviously some political maneuvering going on there.

[Nickdfresh]

Uzbek opposition says 745 died

Tuesday, May 17, 2005 Posted: 10:04 AM EDT (1404 GMT)

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/05/17/uzbekistan.unrest/story.uzbek.military-truck..jpg
A military truck carries Uzbek soldiers on a road outside the eastern city of Andijan.

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan -- An Uzbek opposition leader says her party has compiled a list of 745 people allegedly killed by government troops in Uzbekistan.

Nigara Khidoyatova, the head of the Free Peasants party, told The Associated Press that 542 people had been killed in Andijan and 203 people in Pakhtabad, another city in the Fergana Valley.

However, the country's top prosecutor put the death toll in the eastern town of Andijan at 169.

Rashid Kadyrov said 32 of those who died were government troops and indicated that the others were militants.

"Only terrorists were liquidated by government forces," he told a news conference, with President Islam Karimov at his side -- again contradicting the accounts of witnesses to the violence.

Khidoyatova said her party had arrived at the higher figure by speaking to relatives of those killed, and the count was continuing.

The unrest, which began Thursday, is the worst since Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Uzbek government, which witnesses say has fired on demonstrators in affected areas, blames Islamic extremists for inciting the violence.

The U.N. refugee agency says it has asked the Uzbek and Kyrgyz governments "to leave the border open to all civilians at every crossing point" after the violence sparked a flight of people toward the Kyrgyz border.

The crackdown in Andijan came after protesters stormed a prison, freed inmates and then seized local government offices. But many of the demonstrators were citizens complaining about poverty and unemployment.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that the United States was "still trying to understand" what happened in Andijan, but that Uzbekistan needs to a more open political system.

"They really need more political reform and we've been saying that to the Uzbeks for some time," Rice said.

"I don't mean that they should tolerate terrorists or terrorist groups. ... But it is a system that is politically too closed."

"The main preoccupations are now to encourage everybody to forgo any further violence, to help with the refugees that went into Kyrgyzstan out of Uzbekistan, and to try to deal with the consequences right now of this set of issues," she said.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is visiting Washington for talks about the crisis.

At a news conference on Monday, Straw said the actions of the Uzbek authorities "plainly cannot be justified" and demanded immediate access to Andijan for the International Red Cross, foreign diplomats and journalists.

Meanwhile, the international journalists' advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said in a statement that the Uzbek government imposed a news blackout on Friday and that local and international reporters were "expelled" overnight Friday and Saturday.

"We strongly condemn the silence imposed by the Uzbek authorities that gives rise to completely unverifiable rumors and sows terror among the local population," the group said.

The group called on officials from the United States and the European Union in Tashkent "to press President Islam Karimov to immediately restore free access to news and information."

"No journalist has been able to report from there. The city has been sealed off by trucks and armored vehicles set up by the police and army.

"Uzbek and foreign journalists should be allowed to work normally so that Uzbek civil society as well as international opinion can be informed about political and social developments at this particularly crucial time," the statement said.

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/05/17/uzbekistan.unrest/story.guard.ap.jpg

www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/05/17/uzbekistan.unrest/index.html

Copyright 2005 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

[kentuckyklira]

The government there in no way opposes any of the US administrations policies. Therefore, unlike Saddam Hussein, they´re free to kill, rape and torture as many of their people as they feel the urge to!

[Seshmeister]

It's worse than that.

The US government has been abducting people and taking them there to be tortured. Once they say whatever the CIA want them to say it's then cited as 'indisputable proof' and 'high level intel'.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/04/60minutes/main678155.shtml

Sick shit.

Christians? Don't make me fucking laugh...

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by Seshmeister
It's worse than that.

The US government has been abducting people and taking them there to be tortured. Once they say whatever the CIA want them to say it's then cited as 'indisputable proof' and 'high level intel'.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/04/60minutes/main678155.shtml

Sick shit.

Christians? Don't make me fucking laugh...

How in the world do you bring the word "Christians" into the equation? Your anti-religious fervor is quite pathetic and reaks of the same injustices and intolerance you always whine about. Ponder that thought kind sir. ;)

[Seshmeister]

I thought Bush was voted in by your 'christian' fundies...

[kentuckyklira]

Originally posted by Seshmeister
I thought Bush was voted in by your 'christian' fundies... Give up.

The USA are rapidly turning into a christian version of Iran, and people like BigBlubberButt are probably quite happy about that!