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. Critics have repeatedly warned that the Uzbek security forces could actually fuel terrorism by driving discontent underground. Rights groups estimate the number of political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan to be as high as 6,500, while a UN rapporteur last year said that torture by the security forces appeared to be systematic. Minikes said he had raised the issue of last month\'s sentencing of journalist Ruslan Sharipov to five-and-a-half years imprisonment on homosexuality and sexual abuse charges. \"We can certainly make clear the importance of that matter and every other matter,\" Minikes told journalists. How much scope for maneuver Freedom House\'s office in Tashkent will have remains unclear, but it has been presented as a space where issues of freedom and democracy can be debated without fear. Freedom House is in the process of setting up a non-state printing house in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, which has been presented as a potential means of distributing critical texts around the Central Asia region. (AFP)