An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.2 jolted northern Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan on Tuesday, Pakistan's seismological center said. There were no reports of casualties from the quake, which was centered in the Hindu Kush mountain range in Afghanistan, 180 miles northwest of the Pakistani city of Peshawar. The tremor rattled windows and forced residents to flee their homes, said an official of the center. There were no immediate reports of property damage in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been hit by a number of severe earthquakes, including one in 1998 that killed more than 5,000 people and left tens of thousands homeless in the country's north. (AP) UZBEK EXILE FORMS POLITICAL PARTY 21 May 2001 Uzbek militant Jumma Namangani, has launched a political party under the name of Hizb-i-Islami Turkestan, or the Islamic Party of Turkestan (IPT), reports reaching here from Afghanistan said. The party intends to expand the territorial coverage of the Namangani-led Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) to the entire Turkic belt of Central Asia, including Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, as well as the north-western Chinese province of Xinjiang. The party is also meant to provide a political umbrella to the activities of IMU, which is widely believed to be a terrorist organization seeking to destabilize the newly independent Central Asian Republics. The IPT was launched in the Taliban-held Deh-i-Dadi town, south of Mazar-i-Sharif, a few months ago, but the event was formally notified to the Taliban authorities last week. Deh-i- Dadi serves as the headquarters of the party and the centre from where logistic support is provided to the IMU-run training camps along the Oxus river. Namangani has been declared the party's head, while his second-in-command would be Tahir Yuldashev, another Uzbek militant based in Afghanistan who is wanted on terrorism-related charges in Uzbekistan. Observers say the IMU is being encouraged by the Taliban to win legitimacy as a political opposition in Uzbekistan on the pattern of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), which gave up civil war following a pact with the Tajik government under which it now enjoys official political status and power. According to these observers, the change of IMU's nomenclature from a "movement" to a "party" may be an attempt by the movement's leadership and their Taliban mentors to legitimize the Islamic movements across Central Asia. (Dawn, Karachi) MINSK GROUP CO-CHAIRMEN MEET WITH AZERBAIJANI PRESIDENT, OPPOSITION, DISPLACED PERSONS... 21 May The U.S. Russian and French co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group met in Baku on 18 May with Azerbaijan's President Heidar Aliev to review the progress achieved during the April Key West talks on resolving the Karabakh conflict. Russian co-chairman Nikolai Gribkov cautioned against unrealistic expectations, warning that "what we are saying could give the impression that a peace settlement is within reach, but it is still far away." As he has done on several previous occasions, President Aliev said that responsibility for resolving the conflict lies exclusively with the OSCE. "If the two presidents could have found agreement, there would have been peace long ago," Aliev said. The three co-chairmen met on 19 May in Baku with leading members of the opposition Musavat and Azerbaijan National Independence parties and the reformist wing of the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party. They also visited a camp in Agjabed that houses some 35,000 displaced persons made homeless during the Karabakh conflict to assess humanitarian conditions there. (RFE/RL) MINSK GROUP CO-CHAIRMEN VISIT NAGORNO-KARABAKH, ARMENIA 21 May On 19 May, the three Minsk Group co-chairmen crossed the Line of Contact that separates Azerbaijani and Karabakh Armenian forces, and traveled to Stepanakert where they discussed with senior members of the leadership of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic how to resolve the conflict. No details of those talks were made public. Gribkov told journalists in Stepanakert that the unrecognized republic "is a major factor" and that "no stable or real settlement can be achieved without taking its interests into account." The co-chairmen then traveled on 20 May by helicopter to Spitak in northern Armenia where they met with Armenians who fled Azerbaijan during the early years of the conflict. In Spitak Cavanaugh was quoted as admitting that while the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents "appear determined" to reach a settlement of the conflict, the populations of both countries continue to oppose the concessions that are needed in order to do so. (RFE/RL) KYRGYZSTAN DISCOVERS OIL 20 May The Kyrgyz Prime Minister, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has announced that an oil field, containing reserves of up to 10 million tonnes, has been discovered in the western Dzhalal-Abad region. Mr Bakiyev said the deposit, found by the US-based company Cadena Petroleum, could supply Kyrgyzstan with oil products for the next 70 years, if the original estimates are confirmed. Kyrgyzstan currently imports more than 90% of its requirements from Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. (BBC)