Diplomats taken to Uzbek town, miss killing scene

ANDIZHAN, Uzbekistan - Uzbekistan's government took foreign diplomats to the town where witnesses said troops shot dead hundreds of people but did not show them the actual site of the bloodshed.

Authorities have blamed the killings in the eastern town of Andizhan on Muslim rebels, but witnesses said some 500 people, including women and children, were gunned down by security forces who opened fire on protesters last Friday.

"Write down in your story that they never took us to the school," one diplomat shouted to reporters from a bus taking the envoys and foreign journalists back to the airport.

It was outside School No. 15 on Cholpon Avenue that witnesses said the killings took place.

"It's really weird. Why should they want to go to this school?" this reporter heard one Uzbek official say to another.

Heavily armed special forces accompanied the busloads of visitors as they travelled around the deserted town, where the normally bustling tea houses and kebab shops were empty apart from the police and soldiers patrolling them.

The more than two-hour visit was followed by international calls for an independent investigation into the killings, with diplomats saying that although their trip had been useful, many questions -- such as casualty numbers -- remained unanswered.

The government says 169 were killed, most of them "bandits" who themselves had killed civilians and security officials. An Uzbek opposition party said it had compiled a list of 745 dead.

"We have already captured around 100 bandits. Some of them are already confessing," said Interior Minister Zakirdzhon Almatov, who led the tour around the Central Asian town.

The unrest was sparked by a trial of 23 businessmen and blamed by President Islam Karimov on Islamic extremists.

Opposition politicians in the capital, Tashkent, warned Karimov that more violence could follow the bloodiest chapter in the country's post-Soviet history if he continued to ignore appeals for political reform.

"Our people are beginning to stand up for themselves," Nadira Khidoyatova, head of the opposition Sunshine alliance, told reporters. "They are tired of poverty and injustice -- and they will sweep everything on their way, and there will be even more bloodshed."

The United States has called on Uzbekistan, an ally in Washington's war on terrorism, to be open about events in Andizhan, while the United Nations and the European Union have called for an independent inquiry.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called on Karimov to agree to an independent international inquiry.

"That means a credible and transparent investigation with for example the involvement of appropriate international bodies ... but it must have credibility in the eyes both of the international community and of the Uzbek people," Straw said in remarks prepared for a speech in Washington to a foreign policy think-tank.

The diplomats were taken to the burnt-out regional administration building, held by rebels on Friday.

Standing outside the building, Almatov said: "Rebels took hostages and kept in this building ordinary civilians. They tortured them."

The killings in the densely populated Ferghana Valley have brought widespread international criticism of the Uzbek government, which allows the US military to use an airbase for sorties into neighbouring Afghanistan.

The International Monetary Fund and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development both said on Wednesday that the violent unrest would have a negative impact on an economy that is already stifled by corruption and state control.

The EBRD said it might leave Uzbekistan altogether.

Once the powerhouse of Central Asia, Uzbekistan's history since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been one of economic decline and increasingly autocratic rule, with thousands of religious and political opponents behind bars.

Residents and a local human rights activist say the rebellion was staged by locals protesting against poverty, corruption and Karimov's tough line on Muslims.

But the parliamentary speaker in former imperial master Russia backed the Tashkent government's version of events and said the unrest was not related to politics.

- REUTERS