By empty (9/19/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Major General Nuralisho Nazarov, First Deputy Chairman of the Tajik Border Protection Committee, told journalists on 19 September that Tajik border troops are ready to take responsibility for guarding the Tajik-Afghan border. The Afghan section of Tajikistan\'s frontier has been guarded by Russian border troops under an agreement signed between the two countries in 1993. Nazarov said the Border Protection Committee has submitted to Russia its proposal for a gradual transfer of responsibility to Tajik troops.

By empty (9/19/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Amid criticism of US support for the autocratic regime in Uzbekistan, a senior US diplomat insisted that the United States was not blind to the allegedly systematic abuses committed by its anti-terror ally. Attending the opening of an office for the US democracy group Freedom House, Stephan Minikes, US ambassador to the 55-nation Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said he had discussed \"education, torture, conditions of trial, conditions of arrest\" at a meeting with Uzbekistan\'s Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Norov. Uzbekistan has been a key US ally in the Central Asia region since the start of US-led military operations centred on neighbouring Afghanistan in 2001 and continues to host US forces at its southern Khanabad airbase.

By empty (9/19/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)

The four largest former Soviet republics signed an accord to create a single economic zone on much of the territory of the former Soviet Union. The pact between Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine is aimed at being a first step toward creating a common market and is one of the most concrete accomplishments in the 12-year history of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). But comments by some of the signatories suggested that implementation of the pact, which must still be ratified by the signatories\' parliaments, could stall.