Deposed Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev formally resigned in a hand-written letter faxed to Kyrgyzstan’s new leaders, officials said yesterday, allaying fears of civil war in the strategic Central Asian country.
Bakiyev fled to neighboring Kazakhstan on Thursday, ending days of turmoil that disrupted US military flights through a Kyrgyz air base to operations in Afghanistan.
The crisis has underlined rivalries between the US and Russia for influence in Central Asia, a vast region between China, Afghanistan and the Caspian Sea.
The interim government, led by Roza Otunbayeva, said Bakiyev had faxed his resignation letter overnight from Kazakhstan.
“I tender my resignation in these tragic days as I understand the full scale of my responsibility for the future of the Kyrgyz people,” Bakiyev said in the letter.
Its text was posted on the Twitter account of the interim chief of staff, often used by his team to make announcements. A photograph showed Otunbayeva scrutinizing the letter.
Bakiyev’s departure has sharply reduced tensions in the impoverished former Soviet republic after a violent uprising against his five-year rule raised the specter of civil war.
He has not appeared in public since fleeing. Officials say he is in the Kazakh city of Taraz with his wife and two children. Russian media say he could fly on to Turkey or Latvia.
Taraz, a sleepy town in the southern Kazakh steppe on the Kyrgyz border, overflowed with rumors after Bakiyev’s arrival.
A local security source said Bakiyev had been whisked to a secret location in Taraz and locals saw a motorcade of jeeps without number plates driving out of the airport overnight.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
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An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
COORDINATION, ASSURANCE: Separately, representatives reintroduced a bill that asks the state department to review guidelines on how the US engages with Taiwan US senators on Tuesday introduced the Taiwan travel and tourism coordination act, which they said would bolster bilateral travel and cooperation. The bill, proposed by US senators Marsha Blackburn and Brian Schatz, seeks to establish “robust security screenings for those traveling to the US from Asia, open new markets for American industry, and strengthen the economic partnership between the US and Taiwan,” they said in a statement. “Travel and tourism play a crucial role in a nation’s economic security,” but Taiwan faces “pressure and coercion from the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]” in this sector, the statement said. As Taiwan is a “vital trading
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