May 13, 2005 - 8:50 AM

Uzbek leader blames Islamic militants for violence

By Dmitry Solovyov

ANDIZHAN, Uzbekistan (Reuters) - Uzbek President Islam Karimov on Saturday blamed Islamic militants for violence in which troops fired on protesters and hundreds of people are alleged to have been killed.

One human rights campaigner said the death toll in Andizhan on Friday could have been as high as 500, which would make it the bloodiest incident in Uzbekistan's post-Soviet history.

As night fell on the town in the east of the country, tension was high, with armoured vehicles positioned at crossroads and trucks blocking main thoroughfares.

Residents earlier buried the dead. "In my own neighbourhood, there were five burials of dead relatives and loved ones today," said Ismail, 25, owner of two small food shops.

The government of Uzbekistan, Central Asia's most populous state, is an ally of both Moscow and of Washington's "war on terror" and has been widely accused of severe repression of political opponents.

Few observers expect the uprising in Andizhan to emulate the success of the March rebellion in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, which led to the overthrow of its president.

In his first word on the violence, Karimov denied any order had been given to troops to open fire. He said rebels who seized a state building belonged to the outlawed Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

"I know that you want to know who gave the order to fire at them ... No one ordered (troops) to fire at them," a visibly angry Karimov told a news conference in the capital Tashkent.

Karimov, who has been in power since 1989 and holds the country in a tight grip, said 10 police and troops had been killed and 100 wounded.

He said there was a higher number of rebel casualties, but made no mention of dead or wounded among protesters. He said the protesters were relatives of the 30 rebels who stationed them as human shields outside the building they took over.

But a human rights campaigner in Andizhan, Saidzhakhon Zainabitdinov from the Uzbek rights group Appeal, told Reuters by telephone: "The total number of deaths could reach 500 people from both sides."

Most of the dead were killed by heavy machineguns mounted on armoured personnel carriers, he said, adding the streets were strewn with spent bullet-casings. A pro-opposition reporter counted 30 corpses and a doctor spoke of "many, many dead".

A woman in her 30s said she knew that the regional hospital and another big clinic were holding many dead bodies.

State television and news outlets in the tightly controlled country kept silent on all but official versions of events.

But in Russia the state-run First Channel showed footage of five or six bodies with gunshot wounds lying on the streets and some being loaded onto a truck. One person lay dead, still astride his bicycle.

A protest of around 1,000 people continued on Saturday, but the situation was calmer and fewer soldiers were on the streets, Zainabitdinov said.

The violence in Uzbekistan follows unrest in March in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, where violent protests started in the city of Osh, just across the border from Andizhan, and led to the ousting of President Askar Akayev.

THOUSANDS FLEE

According to Kyrgyz border guards, as many as 4,000 people, including women and children, fled to the nearby village of Kara-Su on the closed border. At another point, 500 people forced their way across the border.

Karimov said the rebels had hoped the upheaval in Kyrgyzstan would help them to foment trouble.

In the past 18 months, there have been peaceful uprisings in two other ex-Soviet republics, Ukraine and Georgia, both of which installed Western-leaning leaders. Central Asia's hardline leaders have reacted by clamping down further on dissent.

Russian news agencies said Karimov called Russian President Vladimir Putin and both men expressed concern at the danger of destabilisation in Central Asia, made up of five ex-Soviet states.

The EU and NATO called for a peaceful resolution to the Uzbekistan conflict.

"I think that repression is basically the policy of the Uzbek government and this will be quite brutally suppressed, I fear," Craig Murray, Britain's former ambassador, told British television.

HIZB UT-TAHRIR DENIES INVOLVEMENT

The anti-government Hizb ut-Tahrir denied starting the violence, a spokesman in London said. The pan-Islamic group has been blamed by Karimov for several past attacks, including explosions at the U.S. and Israeli embassies that killed four people, but it says it is non-violent.

The protesters, some calling for Karimov to stand down, gathered after armed rebels stormed a prison and freed inmates, including 23 businessmen charged with religious extremism. The rebels seized the building and took about 10 police hostage.

Former ambassador Murray said the 23 had been detained on "patently false charges of Islamic extremism".

Uzbek troops retook the state building from the rebels late on Friday, but the area remained sealed off and sporadic gunfire was heard. Officials said the rebels had refused to compromise.

Journalists were told to leave Andizhan, but some were able to return later in the day after roadblocks were eased.

Uzbekistan, a Central Asian country bordering Afghanistan that is one of the world's leading cotton exporters, gave the United States use of a military airbase after the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities.

Rights groups say there are at least 6,000 religious and political prisoners in Uzbekistan, where only state-sponsored Islam is allowed, and that torture is widely used.