Kyrgyzstan's new leadership clamps down on disorder

Kyrgyzstan’s interim prime minister chose his key officials as the new leadership moved quickly to try to quell widespread disorder and looting following the overthrow of the president.

“The city looks as if it has gone mad,” said Felix Kulov, a prominent opposition leader released from prison during Thursday’s turmoil and appointed co-ordinator of the country’s law-enforcement agencies.

Gunshots rang out on a street in the capital of the former Soviet Central Asia republic after dark yesterday as helmeted police in bullet-proof vests chased a rowdy group of youths.

In another part of the darkened capital, Bishkek, with its streetlights extinguished, shots were fired near the central department store on the main avenue where vigilantes and police were on duty against looters. Police fired into the air to warn off a group of looters, witnesses said.

The whereabouts of deposed President Askar Akayev remained a mystery, although Russian news agencies carried a statement purportedly from him saying he was out of the country and denying claims by his opponents that he had resigned.

The new leadership faced the immediate challenge of halting vandalism and looting in the capital and preventing it from spreading to other cities.

In Bishkek, Kulov urged police, who have virtually disappeared from the streets, to return to work or face punishment. But he acknowledged that few police had shown up and looting went on unimpeded.

“It’s an orgy going on here,” Kulov said. “We have arrested many people, we are trying to do something, but we physically lack people.”

Bakiyev emerged from the Parliament building and said he had been named Kyrgyzstan’s acting prime minister and president.

“Freedom has finally come to us,” Bakiyev told a crowd in the central square of the capital.

His appointment as acting prime minister – and thus, under the constitution, acting president – was endorsed by a newly restored parliament of MPs who held seats before the elections that fuelled the protests.

Kyrgyzstan became the third former Soviet republic over the past 18 months - after Georgia and Ukraine – where popular protests have brought down long-entrenched leaders widely accused of corruption.

Russian president Vladimir Putin, speaking during a visit to Armenia, lamented the violence and looting in Kyrgyzstan, saying that “it’s unfortunate that yet again in the post-Soviet space, political problems in a country are resolved illegally and are accompanied by pogroms and human victims”.

He urged the new leadership to restore order quickly, and praised them for having helped develop bilateral ties during their earlier work in the government.

Putin also said the Kremlin would not object if Akayev wanted to go to Russia.

The deposed president is believed to have fled to neighbouring Kazakhstan with his family.

In the unconfirmed statement carried by Russian news agencies, Akayez was quoted as saying: “My current stay outside the country is temporary. Rumours of my resignation are deliberate, malicious lies.”