Moscow turns down Kyrgyzstan’s request for help (Second Lead)

BISHKEK/MOSCOW - Russia Saturday rejected an appeal from Kyrgyzstan’s interim president for military assistance in quelling rising violence in the Kyrgyz south, where the toll had reached at least 65.

A spokeswoman for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, “This is an internal conflict and so far Moscow does not regard the conditions for an active participation to be fulfilled.”

Kyrgyz interim President Rosa Otunbayeva had made the request to Moscow earlier Saturday, both in a written message to Medvedev and in a phone call to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Russia agreed to send humanitarian aid with food and medications. The plane would bring seriously wounded people out of Kyrgyzstan on its return flight.

Russia maintains a few hundred paratroopers at a military base at Kant in northern Kyrgyzstan. But an army spokesman in Moscow said they would not be deployed amidst the violence.

“The unit has a clear mission and will not be called in for other tasks,” the spokesman said.

As fighting continued in Kyrgyzstan Saturday, one soldier was reported killed as the government imposed a state of emergency for the southern city of Jalal-Abad and surrounding areas. The government had previously declared a state of emergency for Osh.

“We need military support in order to get the escalating situation in the south under control,” Otunbayeva said in the capital Bishkek, according to the Akipress agency. She noted that the request for aid would have involved several countries and that the “dynamics of events” in the region permitted no other solution.

Otunbayeva said that the situation in and around the provincial capital of Osh remained unstable, a day after the pitched street battles between local residents and military forces sent in to try to restore order.

As of Saturday, the toll had reached at least 65, with another 900 people injured.

Salvos of machine gun fire and the thunder of artillery shelling could still be heard in several areas in the south, while numerous buildings and cars were in flames, reports reaching Moscow from the region said.

“Anarchy reigns,” a medical doctor was cited as saying, while hospitals in Osh now faced an acute shortage of blood reserves and bandages.

Reports also said plunderers were at large in Osh and surrounding areas, while one entire apartment block had been burned to the ground.

Otunbayeva made an appeal to retired policemen and soldiers to report to help the regular forces. “All hands are needed,” she said.

Otunbayeva blamed backers of ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev for the unrest. They wanted to try to thwart “with every means possible” the planned June 27 national referendum on a new constitution, she said.

The referendum is aimed at introducing democratic structures in the Central Asian country. But the southern region around Osh is a bastion for the Bakiyev clan.

Bakiyev himself is living in exile in Belarus after violent demonstrations ins Bishkek ousted him from power in April.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Uzbek ethnic minority in the country appealed to the interim government to establish a humanitarian corridor for the safe passage of some 20,000 older people, women and children to permit them to reach neighbouring Uzbekistan.

In a referendum two years ago, about 15 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s population declared that they were of ethnic Uzbek origin.