Kyrgyz interim govt sets sights on ousted president

By Liu Dong

The Kyrgyz provisional government threatened Monday to move against deposed president Kurmanbek Bakiyev as he made the first public appearance since fleeing to his sheltered southern stronghold of Jalalabad, where he was allegedly re-stoking violence amid his defiant refusal to step down.

"We are preparing a special operation. But he is hiding behind a human shield," said the interim government's deputy leader, Almaz Atam-bayev, as Bakiyev addressed thousands of supporters in Teyit on Sunday.

"I am the president. This is not a revolution; this is a seizure of power," Bakiyev told the crowds, while cautioning any attempt to kill him would "drown Kyrgyzstan in blood."

"No one has the authority to make me leave my position," Bakiyev said, chiding the self-proclaimed government led by ex-foreign minister Roza Otunbayeva as "natural gangsters."

"In the clannish Kyrgyzstan, the lack of entrenched, shared national identity undermines solidarity. While the country's south has been historically imbued by Islam, the north is under the sphere of Russian influence, which leads to a power separation," said Pan Zhiping, head of the Institute of Central Asia at the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences.

But the new Kyrgyz government won quick recognition from Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telephoned Otunbayeva to "support the efforts of the Kyrgyz administration to peacefully resolve Kyrgyzstan's current political problems," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

"The regime change in the Central Asian country will impact the geopolitical balance in Eurasia," said Wen Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"Kyrgyzstan, which borders Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west and Tajikistan to the southwest, commands a strategic importance for the US and Russia," Wen said.

"Kyrgyz is the only country to host both a Russian and a US military base. The US opened an air corridor in Central Asia, and its Manas air base is pivotal to its counter-terrorism operations," Wen added.

"Kyrgyzstan, which borders the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is also vital for China to prevent infiltration by terrorists and drug smuggling," noted Xing Guangcheng, vice director at the Center of China's Borderland Historical and Geographical Research.