ALMATY - Kazakhstan's information ministry has ordered the closure of a leading opposition paper amid political tensions in the former Soviet republic, the paper's deputy editor said on Thursday.
The Respublika Delovoe Obozrenie (Republic Business Review) weekly was ordered to close after reproducing a controversial interview given to a Russian radio station by the Russian right-wing politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the paper's deputy editor Galina Dyrdina said.
The information ministry charged that by publishing the interview, in which Zhirinovsky questioned the validity of Russia's border with Kazakhstan and denigrated the Kazakh language, the paper was propagating ethnic superiority, violating Kazakhstan's integrity and undermining national security.
Dyrdina insisted that the paper would survive, citing previous similar closure orders that have prompted it to reemerge under a different name.
"There have been so many attempts to close us down, to disturb us, to challenge us, but nothing works because we become stronger, our staff write more bravely and angrily," Dyrdina told a news conference.
The closure comes after police in Russia detained the paper's exiled editor-in-chief Irina Petrushova for two days last month, a move the paper said was at the request of Kazakh authorities.
Petrushova fled Kazakhstan to Russia in 2002 after unknown persons left a headless dog and a funeral wreath outside the paper's office, which was later fire-bombed.
Kazakhstan's opposition has accused President Nursultan Nazarbayev's leadership of orchestrating a campaign of violence against it in the wake of a March uprising in neighboring Kyrgyzstan in which that country's leader Askar Akayev was ousted.
Nazarbayev was Kazakshtan's last Soviet-era leader and has clung to power through a series of elections and referendums that have been widely criticized.
Although his current seven-year term expires in January 2006, ambiguities in the constitution have given rise to a dispute over the date of the next presidential elections, with officials saying elections should occur in December 2006 and the opposition saying they should be held this December.
05/05/2005 12:35 GMT