http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/26/news/uzbek.php
China 'honors' Uzbekistan crackdown
By Chris Buckley International Herald Tribune
FRIDAY, MAY 27, 2005
BEIJING China acclaimed a new treaty with Uzbekistan on Thursday as a milestone promising closer cooperation between the two countries, even as the Uzbek government remained under a shadow of international censure because of army shootings of civilians on May 13.
Uzbekistan's president, Islam Karimov, and China's president, Hu Jintao, signed the "China-Uzbek Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation" on Wednesday, the first day of Karimov's three-day state visit, which started with a 21-gun salute on Tiananmen Square in central Beijing. Karimov's visit has drawn attention to China's courting of Uzbekistan less than two weeks after he oversaw a bloody crackdown against protesters in Andijon in northeastern Uzbekistan.
Karimov's government has said 169 people died in the violence, including 32 government troops. He described the rest of the victims as armed Islamic extremists, but critics of his government and international human rights groups say several hundred more were killed, many of them unarmed political protesters or bystanders.
China has endorsed the crackdown and has used Karimov's visit to draw closer to Uzbekistan, which in the past has been wary of China's intentions in Central Asia.
"Especially under current circumstances, when the Central Asian region faces the threats of separatism and extremism, China and Uzbekistan have many commonalties and shared interests," a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, Kong Quan, said in Beijing on Thursday.
He said their new treaty "will be the political and legal foundation for further strengthening Chinese-Uzbek relations," but declined to discuss its contents.
The United States and its Western allies, who have generally treated Karimov as an ally in their fight against Central Asian terrorism, have criticized the shootings and demanded an independent investigation into the violence; but Hu made it clear that China stands fully behind Karimov. China "honors" Uzbekistan's "efforts to protect its national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity," Hu told Karimov, according to China's official Xinhua News Agency.
"China and the countries of Central Asia have common interests in protecting regional peace, stability and security," Hu said, adding that China was willing to cooperate with Uzbekistan and its neighbors in fighting what China calls the "Three Forces" - ethnic separatism, religious extremism and terrorism.
Hu also stressed China's hopes of strengthening the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the group it helped found in 1996 to fight terrorism and Islam and to promote development in Central Asia.
As well as China and Uzbekistan, the other members of the organization are Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.
China's Xinjiang Province is neighbor to the Central Asian countries. In Xinjiang, the Uighur population - a Turkic group with a language and Islamic faith similar to those of many Central Asian peoples - has long bridled under Beijing's strict controls over their religion and culture, occasionally resorting to violence. Uzbekistan joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2001, when it acquired its present name, but it has been reluctant to see the organization expand its influence and potentially overshadow its role as the dominant Central Asian state.
In Beijing, however Karimov praised his country's deepening ties with China and said their treaty "lays down a solid foundation for the two countries to develop a new strategic partnership," Xinhua reported. Kong, the spokesman, said future China-Uzbek cooperation may include joint military exercises to fight terrorism alongside other Shanghai Organization member states. "We hope the countries of the region can strengthen cooperation and attack terrorist activity together," he said.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization will next meet in Vladisvostok on June 4, with a preceding meeting between Russian, Chinese and Indian officials, he said.
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