Free Republic

The violence unleashed in Kyrgyzstan is being spun as ethnic rioting. The reality is a good deal more complex, and the blame can be laid directly at Russia's door. Russia's coup against the Bakiyev government which took power in the Tulip Revolution leveraged Uzbek separatists in the Osh Province to suppress Kyrgiz nationalist supporters of Bakiyev. Russia had been trying for a while to force out Manas Air Base, a US air force base that serves as a vital link to US forces in Afghanistan. Russia tolerated Bakiyev, so long as he was against the US base. But once Bakiyev...

Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev was ousted as president of Kyrgyzstan on April 7, left the country under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States…. Victims of the unrest have told AFP that the violence was a brutal and orchestrated campaign by armed militias of ethnic Kyrgyz targeting Uzbeks, who make up 14 percent of Kyrgyzstan's population of 5.3 million. Clinton said the United States was working with the international community to support efforts by Kyrgyzstan's interim government to restore order and bring in aid.

Kyrgyzstan's toppled President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, currently in exile in Belarus, lashed out at the interim government which replaced him and insisted that he remains the country's legally elected leader. AFP - Kyrgyzstan's ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev insisted Wednesday that he was still the rightful leader of his country, breaking several days of silence after his flight into exile. "I, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, am the legally elected president of Kyrgyzstan and recognised by the international community," he said, speaking to reporters in Belarus where he took refuge earlier this week "I do not recognise my resignation. Nine months ago the people of...

The deposed president of Kyrgyzstan, Kurmanbek Bakiev, has flown out of the country, ending a week-long standoff with the interim government. The Associated Press is reporting that Mr. Bakiev has formally resigned as president. A week after fleeing the capital amid violent anti-government protests, President Bakiev boarded a military aircraft at Jalal-Abad in the southern part of the country and left Kyrgyzstan. The flight landed in Taraz in neighboring Kazakhstan. A representative of the interim government's press office, Melis Erdjigitov, confirmed to VOA News that Mr. Bakiev had departed the country, but would not comment on his destination.

OSH, Kyrgyzstan – The deposed president of Kyrgyzstan left the country Thursday for neighboring Kazakhstan, allaying fears of new violence in the Central Asian nation that hosts a key U.S. military base supporting the war in Afghanistan. Kazakhstan said the presidents of the United States, Russia and Kazakhstan helped arrange for Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to leave the country. It called Bakiyev's move an "important step toward stabilization of situation."

TEYYIT, Kyrgyzstan (Reuters) – Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said on Tuesday he might resign if the interim government guaranteed his safety and calmed the turmoil gripping the country since an uprising against his five-year rule. Raising for the first time the possibility of ceding power, Bakiyev attached several conditions to stepping down, a sharp shift in tone that could offer a way out of the standoff with the self-proclaimed government which controls Kyrgyzstan.

JALALABAD, Kyrgyzstan (Reuters) – Kyrgyzstan's new rulers ordered President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to surrender by the end of Tuesday, threatening to seize him in a special operation if he continued to defy the interim government. Bakiyev fled to the southern Jalalabad region from the capital Bishkek after troops fired on protesters in an uprising on April 7 that brought his opponents to power. Bakiyev warned the self-proclaimed interim government that making any move against him could stoke further turmoil in the volatile Central Asian nation where the United States rents an air base used for the war effort in Afghanistan. "There...

TEYYIT, Kyrgyzstan (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan's new rulers on Tuesday gave ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev until the end of the day to surrender, threatening otherwise to launch a special operation against his stronghold in the south. Bakiyev fled to the Jalalabad region of the mountainous Central Asian state from the capital Bishek after troops fired on protesters on April 7, sparking the uprising that brought his opponents to power. Bakiyev, who swept to power five years ago in the "Tulip Revolution" that ousted the country's first post-Soviet ruler Askar Akayev, warned the self-proclaimed interim government that any attempt to detain him...

Kyrgyz opposition leader Roza Otunbayeva said on Thursday she had taken over the government after violent protests forced the president of the Central Asian country to flee the capital. She said she wanted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who she helped bring to power five years ago, to resign. "We have a caretaker government now in place, and I am the head of it," Otunbayeva told Reuters by telephone. "It will remain in place for half a year, during which we will draft the constitution and create conditions for free and fair (presidential) elections," she said. Bakiyev left Bishkek -- where demonstrators...

Leaders of a six-nation security bloc led by Beijing and Moscow called for a deadline to be set for the withdrawal of US forces from bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. The presidents of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which comprises Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and China, signed a declaration calling for deadlines to be set on the closure of airbases used by US forces in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. "Considering that the active phase of the military anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan has finished, member states... consider it essential that the relevant participants in the anti-terrorist coalition set deadlines on...

BEIJING, May 31. (RIA Novosti) - China may "seriously consider" sending its troops to Kyrgyzstan, the Huaxia Shibao newspaper on Tuesday reported Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao as saying. According to some mass media, on May 25, Kyrgyz acting president Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced that he would agree to deploy in the country troops of the Collective Security Treaty Organization led by Russia, as well as of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, including Chinese troops. The announcement came following mass riots in Uzbek regions bordering on Kyrgyzstan. The Uzbek authorities blamed the upheavals on Islamic extremists. Liu Jianchao underlined that so...

BISHKEK (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan's new authorities, struggling to end chaos after last week's coup, has appointed as the Central Asian country's leader a key figure behind the overthrow of veteran President Askar Akayev. With the crisis threatening to drag the impoverished ex-Soviet state even deeper into mayhem, the new parliament named as prime minister the man who had led protests against its election and triggered the coup -- Kurmanbek Bakiyev. That automatically confirms his position as acting president, a role he took on last Friday even though Akayev, in power for 14 years, has refused to quit. On Monday, Akayev...