An international police force may be needed to restore stability in southern Kyrgyzstan after the ethnic bloodshed that has killed hundreds and sparked a wave of refugees, an OSCE official said today.
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe is leading talks with EU foreign ministers on beefing up security in the strategic Central Asian state, said Kimmo Kiljunen, special envoy for the OSCE parliamentary assembly.
"What I think would be really useful would be to have a certain international police operation to offer technical advice, and maybe the presence of international police here. That would create an atmosphere of trust," he told reporters.
He said EU foreign ministers were already discussing the option of using police to provide crisis management support. However, the European Union said that while it was reinforcing its delegation in Kyrgyzstan, it had no immediate plans to contribute police.
"At this stage we are just reinforcing our delegation to make sure there is enough expertise on the ground," said a spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
Violence in Kyrgyzstan has raised concerns in Russia and the United States, which both operate military bases in the country, that the turmoil could spread to other parts of Central Asia.
The Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a Russia-led grouping of former Soviet republics, will send its secretary general, Nikolai Bordyuzha, to Kyrgyzstan on Friday.
The CSTO said in a statement a working group would evaluate the situation in south Kyrgyzstan and assist in law enforcement.
"Further proposals will be developed for the CSTO member states to help the Kyrgyz security forces in localising and suppressing unrest and preventing extremist violence," it said.
Ben Slay, a senior economist at the UN Development Programme, said that by sowing distrust between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz, the violence would end up hitting the already fragile economy of the impoverished country.
Kyrgyz security forces today raided Uzbek neighbourhoods in the strife-torn city of Osh for a third day as thousands more refugees streamed back to the scene of carnage.
Human rights workers in Osh, the epicentre of three days of killing this month that sparked an exodus of ethnic Uzbeks, said the raids had been accompanied by looting and more violence in the run-up to a crucial vote on how Kyrgyzstan will be governed.
Reuters