Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev yesterday threatened to dissolve parliament in an escalating political crisis in the impoverished former Soviet republic.
Bakiyev told lawmakers that he was calling a Security Council meeting later yesterday "to decide the fate of parliament."
Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian nation of 5 million people, has been gripped by political infighting since the ouster of longtime ruler Askar Akayev in March last year.
Bakiyev's threat to dissolve parliament followed his failure earlier in the week to push through constitutional amendments that would expand his powers.
The amendments would have been the second set of changes to the Constitution in as many months.
Last month protests forced the president to sign amendments curtailing his powers.
Parliament has been under pressure to return to Bakiyev the authority to form a Cabinet since prime minister Felix Kulov resigned last week, claiming that the amendments made it impossible for the government and parliament to work together and called for new parliamentary elections.
Bakiyev yesterday said that the amendments were "rushed and created contradictions."
"We thought that with new expanded powers parliament would be more efficient, but it is yet to pass next year's budget and a set of new economic laws," he said.
The US maintains a military base in Kyrgyzstan -- the only such outpost in former Soviet Central Asia -- to back up anti-terror operations in Afghanistan. Russia also has an air base in the country.
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