Turkmen row with Uzbekistan over coup attempt may lead to war - Kazakh paper.

(From BBC Monitoring International Reports)

The diplomatic standoff between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan following Turkmen accusations that the Uzbek ambassador had assisted the organizers of an assassination attempt against the Turkmen president would well lead to armed conflict, the Kazakh Karavan newspaper has said. Both sides are reported to have started to move forces up towards their common border, and border controls have been tightened. The following is the text of an article entitled "30 minutes before a war?" by Yelena Gurina published in the newspaper on 27 December:

Mutual accusations between Asgabat and Tashkent have led to open confrontation. The armed forces of the two countries, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, are being deployed on the Turkmen-Uzbek border. Analysts believe that the situation is not far from a armed conflict.

This confrontation started back on 25 November, following the assassination attempt against Turkmen President Saparmyrat Nyyazow [Turkmenbasy] in Asgabat. Then the Turkmen authorities immediately said that the plot had been staged by a gang of international mercenaries of "Caucasian origin" directed from Russia. Official Asgabat declared the shooting of the presidential cortege to be an "act of international terrorism".

The Russian Foreign Ministry treated this statement as another PR move by the eccentric Turkmenbasy. Official Tbilisi asked Asgabat to provide information on the involvement of Georgian citizens in the attempt. Turkey offered help to find organizers of the attempt.

It is not clear whether answers to these question were obtained, but neighbouring Uzbekistan was in the end declared the main enemy of Turkmenbasy. Officers from the Turkmen special services stormed the Uzbek embassy in Asgabat last week allegedly to seek out there Turkmen terrorists - the organizers of the assassination attempt against Turkmenbasy. On the same day, the prosecutor-general of Turkmenistan, ...