In a statement published on 17 April, Turkmenistan's former Prime Minister Aleksandr Dodonov announced that he is joining the opposition National Democratic Movement of Turkmenistan group based in Moscow. The 55-year-old Dodonov, who also served as water resources minister from 1996 to 1998, accused President Saparmurat Niyazov of "usurping all branches of power," and said Niyazov's "dilettantist" interventions in economic matters, particularly problems of agriculture and irrigation, threaten to lead the country to ruin. He added that the government's "fantastic" statistics on record-breaking plantings and harvests were myths. Dodonov, who has lived in Moscow since 1998, is the latest of several prominent Turkmen officials to join the opposition-in-exile movement since the defection of ex-Foreign Minister Boris Shikhmuradov last November. (gundogar.org)