Kyrgyzstan protests spread

Opposition protesters, using sticks and petrol bombs, seized Kyrgyzstan's second city yesterday as increasingly violent unrest aimed at forcing President Askar Akayev to resign swept the south of the country.

Central Asian Kyrgyzstan has become the latest ex-Soviet republic - after Ukraine and Georgia - to be rocked by anti-government protests in the wake of elections judged as flawed by international observers.

A spokesman for Mr Akayev, who cancelled a public appearance scheduled for yesterday, said the president was ready to hold talks with the opposition but analysts said the veteran leader would struggle to survive the challenge to his 14-year rule.

"The most important thing right now is to let people calm down, assess what has happened and then start negotiations with them about their demands," spokesman Abdil Segizbayev said.

Police and officials in Osh fled when a crowd of about 1,000 young men armed with sticks and petrol bombs stormed the regional administrative building and police headquarters.

In the city centre, crowds chanting "Akayev out!" tore up looted books written by the president. By evening Osh was calm, with people going about their normal business along the dusty streets but the normally omnipresent police were gone.

Opposition activists took control of the nearby town of Jalal Abad overnight after violent clashes with police. Police sources said four officers were beaten to death.

Analysts said that although the south's large Uzbek minority added the danger of ethnic clashes to the conflict, the unrest was largely driven by the region's grudges over its economic and political marginalisation.

"For (Mr) Akayev, I think the writing is on the wall. It is going to be hard for him to come back and restore his reputation," said David Lewis, the Central Asian projects director from influential think-tank Crisis Group.

"There is a sense of betrayal in the south, that they have had a bad deal right from the start. The elections were the final straw and the opposition has played well on that."

Mr Akayev yesterday also ordered a review of parliamentary election results in those regions where the polls in the past two months have been disputed by the opposition.

But the violence left the opposition with no option but to press on with protests that even its own leaders said were gaining a momentum of their own, said a Western diplomat.

"The opposition has played poker with very high risks... Our main interest is to avoid further escalation of violence," the diplomat told Reuters.

Kyrgyzstan's north has remained largely calm although officials in the capital Bishkek said several opposition activists had been detained.

In Osh, a crowd of about 200 men armed with sticks and police riot shields took over the airport, where they were threatening violence against a nervous-looking unit of troops who had changed into civilian clothes and were trying to leave.

"The situation is spinning out of control... (It) cannot be any more explosive than it is," Kurmanbek Bakiyev, a leader of the loose opposition coalition, told reporters in Bishkek.

Mr Akayev has warned any attempt to copy Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" could drag the Muslim country of nearly five million into civil war.