International
Uzbekistan to open key Afghan aid bridge
TASHKENT, DEC. 8. Uzbekistan today said it would throw open a bridge seen as crucial for aid deliveries to Afghanistan and the United States invited Uzbek President, Mr. Islam Karimov, to Washington.
Aid agencies and officials had long been urging Uzbekistan to open the friendship bridge linking it to northern Afghanistan in order to speed humanitarian deliveries to the population of its war-weary Neighbour.
``We discussed the humanitarian situation and in that regard the President confirmed that the bridge would open tomorrow after one last technical check,'' the U.S. Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell, said at a news conference in the Uzbek capital Tashkent.
Uzbekistan has expressed concerns over the strength of the bridge, saying it needed checks before it could be used for aid deliveries. The United States recently sent military engineers to examine it. ``This (opening) will ease the flow of humanitarian aid into Afghanistan and I thanked the President for this decision,'' Gen. Powell said after talks with Mr. Karimov. Gen. Powell is on a tour of allies in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
Mr. Karimov said the state commission would meet on Sunday to give its final approval for the opening. He also said it would decide arrangements for infrastructure and customs points.
The Uzbek President added that the opening of the bridge had political, as well as economic and humanitarian, significance.
Uzbekistan's southern Termez port has provided a major route for aid agencies moving supplies by barge into Afghanistan, but Uzbek authorities had been reluctant to open the bridge across the Amu Darya river without adequate security guarantees.
Uzbekistan closed the bridge five years ago to stop violence and Islamic fundamentalism spilling over the border when the hardline Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan.
Gen. Powell also said he had brought a letter from U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, for Mr. Karimov, thanking him for his support ``and hoping that he and the President would be able to meet in Washington in the not too distant future''.
The ex-Soviet Central Asian states have been thrust into the world spotlight since the U.S. launched its military campaign in Afghanistan to crush Osama bin Laden - the man Washington blames for the September 11 hijack attacks on the United States.
Never before have they been host to such a stream of high-level visitors or received so much diplomatic attention.
And the presence of a reported 1,500 U.S. soldiers in Uzbekistan, limited to conducting search and rescue or humanitarian operations in the campaign that toppled the Taliban, has changed the face of Tashkent's ties to Washington.
Gen. Powell had told reporters travelling with him that his message to countries ``looking for their place in the sun'' was that they could expect a long-term embrace from the United States - if they tried harder to live up to its expectations on democratisation and economic reform.
- Reuters
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