KYRGYZSTAN: Kyrgyzstan's new acting president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, appointed an interim cabinet and vowed to crack down on rampant looting yesterday, a day after a surge of violent protest forced veteran leader Askar Akayev to flee the central Asian state.
Mr Akayev, who is believed to be in neighbouring Kazakhstan, denounced the opposition leaders and vowed to return, even as his erstwhile ally, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, said he could work with the people now at the helm in Kyrgyzstan.
As Mr Bakiyev (55) - a one-time reformist prime minister who parted ways with Mr Akayev - tried to establish political control, his ally Felix Kulov struggled to restore order to the streets in his new capacity as security chief.
Occasional volleys of gunfire were heard last night in the capital Bishkek, where the morning after the revolution revealed a night of violence and mass looting. Stores and shopping centres around the city were stripped bare and their windows smashed, while three people were reported killed and 360 injured in the nocturnal chaos.
"The city looks like it has gone mad," said Mr Kulov, a prominent opposition leader released from prison during Thursday's turmoil. "God forbid anybody would have to have such a revolution. It was a rampage of looting, just like in Iraq. We have arrested many people. We are trying to do something, but we physically lack people."
Most of the police melted away on Thursday after being beaten away from the government headquarters by a rampaging crowd, which then stormed the building and declared the end of a regime they blamed for rigged elections, poverty and corruption.
Mr Akayev (60) disappeared to an unknown location, rumoured to be central Kazakhstan, and issued a defiant statement from his hideout yesterday, suggesting he had not given up hope of continuing his 15-year rule in Kyrgyzstan. "My current stay outside the country is temporary," he said in a statement e-mailed to a Kyrgyz news agency.
Calling his opponents "a bunch of irresponsible adventurers and conspirators", he insisted "rumours of my resignation are deliberate, malicious lies". But few tears were shed for Mr Akayev yesterday, either at home or among foreign allies.
Both Mr Putin and Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev blamed the Kyrgyz government for provoking revolution by failing to alleviate poverty and discontent in the strategic nation, which borders China and is close to Afghanistan. It also hosts both US and Russian air bases.
Hinting at recent peaceful revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia - both of which were disapproved of by the Kremlin - Mr Putin said "it is unfortunate that, yet again in the post-Soviet space, political problems in a country are resolved illegally". But he also said he bore no grudge against the opposition leaders.
"We know these people pretty well and they have done quite a lot to establish good relations between Russia and Kyrgyzstan," Mr Putin said, while also saying that Mr Akayev could come to Russia if he wished.
The United States and EU officials called for calm in Kyrgyzstan, where the mostly ethnic Uzbek south has long felt abandoned by Mr Akayev's native, better off and predominantly Kyrgyz north.
"I will not allow the division of the people into north and south," Mr Bakiyev vowed yesterday. "We are a united nation. Freedom has finally come to us."
