Tuesday, May 31, 2005. Issue 3177. Page 4.

The Associated Press

www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/05/31/018.html

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan — Police detained dozens of opposition activists over the weekend in a new crackdown on dissent after this month’s uprising in eastern Uzbekistan, an opposition party leader said Monday.

“Within the last two days, police have detained dozens of our party members, saying we are hiding terrorists involved in the recent uprising in the Fergana Valley,” Vasilya Inoyatova, the leader of the outlawed Birlik party, or Unity, said by telephone from a police station in the capital, Tashkent.

A human rights activist, Surat Ikramov, said Monday that police were preventing him from leaving his home in Tashkent and that he had received calls from numerous other rights activists who either had been detained or were forcibly isolated in their homes.

The detentions follow the uprising that erupted in the eastern city of Andijan on May 13, when militants seized a local prison and government headquarters and thousands of protesters hit the streets. Uzbek authorities say 173 people died, but deny they opened fire on unarmed civilians. Rights advocates say up to 750 people were killed in the violence.

Inoyatova said at least 20 activists who had come from the eastern Fergana Valley for a party meeting in Tashkent were detained Monday morning, and that other Birlik members and her relatives, including her husband and 26-year-old son, had been arrested earlier.

On Sunday, Inoyatova and representatives of three other outlawed opposition parties met with three U.S. senators — John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Sununu — who added their voices to Western calls for the country’s leadership to allow an international investigation into the bloodshed.

President Islam Karimov has rejected UN and Western calls for an international inquiry, saying Uzbek authorities would conduct their own probe. He has blamed the unrest on Islamic extremists, accusing them of killing hostages and of using civilians as human shields.

McCain warned on Monday that the Uzbek government’s failure to allow an international probe would jeopardize U.S.-Uzbek ties.