Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Karimov blamed US for unrest - Arena

From the Arena news agency ( the site's address is freeuz.org, and the logo is captioned in part with the only English words on the main page - "Committee for freedom of speech and expression" - so they are not neutral; they have an English-language page, but as with so many of these agencies they are not able to translate most of their content):
The President knows which forces have an interest in destabilizing the situation in Uzbekistan 14.05. [I think the headline is intended to be sarcastic]

[...] Karimov thinks that the sources of this operation are outside of the country, and that there are forces which have an interest in destabilizing the situation in Uzbekistan. These are not only Hizb ut Tahrir, but the United States as well. Karimov made it clear that the "leader of a large superpower, who just completed a tour of the CIS nations" is inclined to forcibly implant democracy in the post-Soviet space. [...]
Has anyone seen this sound bite anywhere else? It's hard to believe the Western wires wouldn't have picked it up and run with it if he really said it. If he did, it would reveal extremely poor judgement at best, or paranoia verging on insanity at worst. But don't ask me, I just translate these things, I don't know if they're really true or not.

Has anyone seen a full transcript of Karimov's remarks on Saturday the 14th? Please comment with a link if so. Thanks.

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