BISHKEK - Kyrgyz lawmakers Saturday set a new presidential vote for June as they struggled to stabilise their Central Asian country amid political in-fighting following the toppling of its Soviet-era regime.
Parliament voted to hold the new election on June 26.
The country's new leaders, drawn from the former opposition, assured the nation that police had brought under control looting that had flared in the capital over the past two days.
"The situation in the republic is stable," Felix Kulov, the nation's new security chief, told national television. "Normal life has returned."
Kulov said 129 people were detained during the night as police and volunteers patrolled the city against looters who rampaged through the capital's center the previous evening after demonstrators overran the nation's main seat of power, forcing veteran leader Askar Akayev to flee.
Akayev has not been seen since Wednesday, when he refused to annul the results of recent parliamentary elections, discontent over which gave rise to the demonstrations.
The next day, opposition protests in the capital effectively ended his 15-year rule over the impoverished mountainous nation of five million people on China's western edge.
Unconfirmed news agency reports in Moscow had him arriving in Russia early Saturday.
At least three people died in Bishkek as a result of the unrest, with some unconfirmed reports putting the toll as high as six.
"The revolution is finished, now we are seeking to reestablish order," Kurmanbek Bakieyv, who has been named the country's acting president, told reporters.
But in a potent reminder that the situation in the nation remained far from stable, parliamentary deputies argued over how to sort out the legislative confusion in which the country now finds itself.
Following the toppling of the regime on Thursday, the chief of the supreme court said that the justices had annulled the results of the election.
This has left Kyrgyzstan with two rival parliaments -- the outgoing chamber and the newly-elected chamber. On Saturday the deputies from both met to try to work out a compromise on how to proceed.
"We have already taken the oath office so we are legitimate. They just want to grab power under the cover of talking about the will of the people," one deputy from the new chamber, Kubanychbek Isabekov, told the RIA Novosti news agency.
"You can't speculate using the street," he said.
The upheaval in Kyrgyzstan, a hitherto relatively obscure republic on international news channels, was being closely watched abroad because of the country's location in strategic, energy-rich Central Asia and because it has become the third ex-Soviet republic in a little over a year where demonstrations have brought down Moscow-friendly regimes, after Georgia and Ukraine.
Russia, the traditional power broker in Central Asia, is jostling with the United States for influence in the region. Kyrgyzstan has one of the most stark examples of this tug-of-war -- the nation has both American and Russian military bases just outside its capital.
Bakiyev and other opposition leaders who have taken the reins of power have pledged to continue Akayev's pro-Moscow policies.
"In no way are we preparing to distance ourselves from Russia," Bakiyev told reporters Saturday. "We cannot do that. Our relations with Russia are going to develop more and more."
03/26/2005 13:20 GMT