Diplomats taken to Uzbek town

ANDIZHAN, Uzbekistan - Uzbekistan's government yesterday 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 massacre.

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 that 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.

The group included diplomats from a number of European countries, including Britain, Romania and the Czech Republic, and China and South Korea.

The more than two-hour tour of the Central Asian town, in the densely populated Ferghana Valley, was led by Interior Minister Zakirdzhon Almatov who repeated government insistence that it was rebels, not Uzbek troops, who were behind last week's slaughter.

"Some media are saying the Uzbek government opened fire on peaceful demonstrators. But where do you see peaceful demonstrators? How dare you say those were peaceful civilians," Almatov barked at reporters.

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.

The killings have brought widespread international criticism of the Uzbek government which has been ally for the US war on terror by allowing Washington to use an airbase for sorties into neighbouring Afghanistan.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Tuesday Uzbekistan had the right to fight terrorism but said Washington had pushed President Islam Karimov's government to improve its rights record and urged it to be open about events in Andizhan.

"We would hope that the government of Uzbekistan would be very open in understanding what has happened there," Rice told reporters.

"(The United States has) a record of going to the Karimov government and telling them in no uncertain terms that it is time to open up their political system and to reform." The unrest, sparked by the trial of 23 Muslim businessmen and blamed by Karimov on Islamic extremists, was the bloodiest chapter in Uzbekistan's troubled post-Soviet history.

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 and thousands of religious and political opponents behind bars.

Analysts have repeatedly warned that the government's hardline is only breeding extremism in the mostly Muslim nation.

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.

Britain's envoy to Uzbekistan, David Moran, said the short visit to Andizhan could not answer all their questions.

"I think we need to be realistic about how much can be achieved in a whistle-stop tour of ambassadors," Moran said.

"What we need now as a next step is a systematic process of openness that will enable the international community to make an authoritative assessment of the scale and the nature of what happened here."

- REUTERS