TASHKENT - Uzbekistan's authorities have opened a criminal case against Internews Network, a California-based media support group, the prosecutor general's office said on Tuesday.
Internews, which supports projects to develop independent media throughout the world, becomes the latest Western group to face scrutiny by Uzbekistan's hardline regime during the past several months.
The Internews Network "has had a criminal case launched against it for acting without a licence," prosecutor general's spokeswoman Svetlana Artikova told AFP.
In Uzbekistan, the organization provides training and support for several small non-state television stations.
"We haven't received any documents confirming the case against us but have been under investigation," the head of Internews' Tashkent office, Kholida Anorboeva, told AFP.
The announcement comes amid signs of nervousness among some Central Asian leaders that "people power" uprisings of the kind seen in Georgia and Ukraine might be spreading to this region following last month's ousting of veteran Kyrgyz leader Askar Akayev.
"Of course this is related to the revolutions (in Ukraine and Georgia) -- eventually they want to deregister Internews," a journalist familiar with the case told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Internews is the latest Western organization to have come under pressure recently in authoritarian Uzbekistan. Others have included the International Republican Insitute (IRI), a non-governmental organisation that has said it is having problems renewing its registration.
In a high profile case last year Uzbek authorities expelled the Open Society Institute of the US billionaire democracy promoter George Soros, which had been particularly active in the education sector and media sectors.
In neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, ousted veteran leader Askar Akayev repeatedly blamed foreign-funded groups for fanning unrest before he fled the country on March 24 after his administration building was over-run by opposition protestors.
04/05/2005 13:25 GMT