By empty (8/3/2005 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Azerbaijan is close to agreement with the United States on the establishment of a US military presence following the eviction of American forces from Uzbekistan, a Russian newspaper said Wednesday. \"A decision wanted by Washington has almost ripened,\" the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper quoted an unnamed source close to Azerbaijan\'s foreign ministry as saying. The president of the strategic Caspian country, Ilham Aliyev, \"in the end will give his agreement to the deployment in the country of an American military contingent,\" the source said.

By empty (8/3/2005 issue of the CACI Analyst)

The Kyrgyz Prosecutor General\'s Office has evidence that 15 of the Uzbek refugees who fled to Kyrgyzstan following the May uprising in Andizhan in Uzbekistan committed crimes and can be extradited. \"The Prosecutor General\'s Office has reliable evidence that proves these 15 Uzbek citizens\' involvement in grave crimes,\" Prosecutor General Nurlan Zheenaliyev said in a statement. \"The crimes of a non-political nature that were perpetrated by these people provide grounds for our refusal to apply international acts on refugee status to them,\" Zheenaliyev said.

By empty (8/2/2005 issue of the CACI Analyst)

A group of 300 people from five villages in the Jeti-Oguz District of Kyrgyzstan\'s Issyk-Kul Province have been blocking the Barskoon-Kumtor highway for six days in an attempt to win compensation for a 1998 mining accident, RFE/RL\'s Kyrgyz Service reported on 1 August. The protesters want Canada\'s Centerra Gold, which owns the Kumtor gold mine in Kyrgyzstan, to compensate them for a 1998 cyanide spill that they say has killed more than 300 people over the last seven years. Mining-industry representatives say that they paid compensation in full at the time of the accident and that any objections now should be addressed to the Kyrgyz government.