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Albright to talk tough on democracy in Central Asia

WASHINGTON: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will talk tough on democracy in Central Asia next month and address the subject of regional security, her spokesman said on Thursday.

State Department spokesman James Foley said Albright's overall aim was to stress the importance of the newly independent states. "Their success is important to stability in Central Asia, in the wider Europe and for the global community," he said.

Albright's emphasis on regional security underscores fears of a spread of religious militancy in the oil-rich region on the fringes of the former Soviet Union.

Her passage through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan on April 14-20 follows a trip by George Tenet, director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, who was in Tashkent on Wednesday. An Uzbek government source said it was a top secret mission to discuss terrorism.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation head, Louis Freeh, is also due in Kazakhstan next week.

Washington would like to see the countries take their cues from the West rather than from Moscow, which has looked increasingly attractive to Central Asian states in recent months.

Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin has offered Central Asian states the support of Russian secret services in setting up a joint anti-terrorism centre. About 11,000 Russian guards already patrol the volatile Tajik-Afghan border.

One of Albright's destinations is Tashkent.

An affiliated group of up to 1,000 gunmen invaded Kyrgyzstan in mid-1999, forcing it to seek military aid from neighbouring countries to settle the security crisis.

"We are troubled by some shortcomings in the field of democratization and elsewhere," Foley said.

"Nevertheless, we support their efforts to consolidate their sovereignty and their democracies and their economic reform programmes, and we want to encourage them to do better," he added.

All three countries fared badly in the State Department's annual human rights report for 1999 which criticised recent elections, corruption and rights abuses.-Reuters