CHISINAU - Uzbek President Islam Karimov is withdrawing his country from the GUUAM alliance of five former Soviet republics, complaining the entity has become too political, the group's chairman announced Thursday.
Karimov, who was Uzbekistan's last Soviet-era leader and has clung to power ever since, announced his decision in a letter to the GUUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova) chairman, Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin.
In the letter, Karimov blamed "changes in the originally stated purposes and tasks" of the group, which was established in the 1990s to strengthen the independence and sovereignty of the five members, according to ITAR-TASS news agency.
GUUAM had turned into a "political organisation," he said in the letter. The authenticity of the letter was confirmed by a senior official in the Uzbek capital Tashkent.
The Uzbek leader skipped the last GUUAM summit in April. The gathering featured calls for further uprisings in former Soviet republics along the lines of those that have occurred in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in the past 18 months.
Karimov has been criticised in the West for his autocratic style and the security forces' alleged use of torture.
At home there have been signs of increasing public discontent.
The withdrawal confirms the fractious nature of relations among the republics that once made up the Soviet Union, an issue that may resurface when the region's leaders meet in Moscow this weekend for a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
05/05/2005 17:07 GMT