TASHKENT - Uzbek troops reclaimed control Thursday over a key town on the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border and reportedly arrested local Islamist leaders, as an international human rights group said up to 1,000 people may have died in the military crackdown.
For the first time since angry protestors set fire to government buildings and chased government authorities from Kara-Suu over the weekend, Uzbek border guards appeared at the main border crossing point of the town, which straddles the frontier between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
"Uzbek border guards have been back since 6:00 am (0100 GMT)," one border guard on the Kyrgyz side of the town told AFP, as helicopters circled overhead.
Residents from the Uzbek portion of the town, questioned in Kyrgyzstan, said that returning government forces had arrested Bakhtiyar Rakhimov, who is believed to head pro-Islamist forces on the Uzbek side of the town, along with two of his associates. No bloodshed was reported.
Residents said that Rakhimov had led efforts to open a bridge over the canal running through the divided town, but it was not clear whether he had actually led the protests that erupted on the Uzbek side after the deadly crackdown in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan last Friday.
"They say they are fanatics, but it's not true," said Alim, a 35-year-old vegetable vendor who lives on the Uzbek side of the town, known as Karasuv.
Local opposition activists have said that up to 745 people were killed in Andijan after soldiers called to disperse an anti-government rally fired indiscriminately on the crowd.
They received backing Thursday from the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, which said that Uzbek security forces may have gunned down up to 1,000 civilians in Andijan and surrounding areas, and wounded some 2,000.
"The attacks on demonstrators have been followed in some cases by summary executions of the wounded, and by arbitrary arrests and detentions," it said in a statement issued in Vienna.
The government of Uzbekistan's autocratic President Islam Karimov has said 169 people died in what it described as a battle between Islamic radicals bent on overthrowing the government and law enforcement officers.
But the Helsinki watchdog said: "No one can accept the claim that the crowd on Babur Square in Andijan posed a threat that would justify a massive armed assault on a crowd consisting mainly of women.
"The attack can be interpreted as an act of brutal repression aimed at further intimidating the Uzbek population in the face of democratic changes in Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and Georgia."
Karimov, a 67-year-old Soviet-era leader who has stamped out opposition in the country of 24 million people, is facing unprecedented international pressure over the violence.
On Wednesday, Britain, the European Union and the United Nations called for an international enquiry into the unrest.
France joined the chorus Thursday saying Foreign Minister Michel Barnier had repeatedly condemned the violence in Uzbekistan and the crackdown on the civilian population since the start of the week, and was calling for an international enquiry to establish the truth.
Although Washington has stopped short of demanding an international probe, a senior US official hinted in Moscow Thursday that the United States could reevaluate its economic aid to Uzbekistan if the government did not investigate the clashes to the satisfaction of the outside world.
"There are decisions that could be taken, depending on how things unfold, with respect to assistance to Uzbekistan," he said.
The Andijan killings have sparked the most pointed criticism from Washington directed at Karimov in years. The United States considers Uzbekistan a key ally in its war on terror and has tempered its criticism of Karimov since he agreed to host a US air base on his soil after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
The Andijan clashes have also emboldened some Karimov opponents inside Uzbekistan, where public criticism of the president is rare and reports of systematic use of torture in prisons and police stations are widespread among rights groups.
An Uzbek opposition leader living in exile in Norway urged the international community o withdraw its support for the Karimov regime and dismissed fears that Islamists would come to power were the veteran leader to fall.
"We call on Uzbekistan's strategic partners to withdraw their aid. You'll see, the regime will fall in six months," Mukhammad Salikh, a leader of the Erk party, considered one of Uzbekistan's two main opposition parties, told AFP.
"But we don't want a bloody destruction. We want to launch ... a peaceful transition toward a new political system."

05/19/2005 19:40 GMT