Kyrgyzstan’s interim government said on Thursday it will root out and punish organizers of what it called a coup attempt by supporters of ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev in the nation’s volatile south.
Bakiyev supporters seized government buildings in three southern regions of the impoverished Central Asian state in a coup attempt, the interim government said, and appealed for popular support as it prepares to track down those responsible.
“We know by name all organizers of this action. We have enough forces and means to round them up and arrest them during the upcoming day,” Azimbek Beknazarov, a deputy interim government head, said in a live speech on national television.
“We will start setting up units of vigilantes in every district, city and village today. I invite everybody to come out to preserve the people’s government,” said Beknazarov, who oversees security and defense in the interim government.
Any worsening of tensions in the south, at the heart of the Ferghana Valley, Central Asia’s most flammable and ethnically divided corner, would be of concern to the US and Russia, which both operate military bases in Kyrgyzstan.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev appointed Vladimir Rushailo, a former Russian interior minister and security council secretary, his special envoy on establishing closer relations with Kyrgyzstan.
“We are receiving information and are trying to understand what is happening”, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Just hours after the appointment, Kyrgyzstan’s interim government’s chief of staff Edil Baisalov said Rushailo was to visit Bishkek for talks with top Cabinet officials — a clear sign of Moscow’s support in hard times. The talks were scheduled to take place yesterday.
“We have known Rushailo for a long time as a friend of Kyrgyzstan,” Baisalov told Moscow’s Rossiya-24 channel.
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