Kyrgyz foreign minister complains to Mogherini about speech of sentenced-in-absentia Uzbek community leader at OSCE/ODIHR
BISHKEK. Oct 6 (Interfax) - Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Erlan Abdyldaev and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini have met in Brussels to discuss cooperation and transformations of the OSCE Center in Bishkek into a program office, a representative of the Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry told Interfax on Thursday.
The meeting between Abdyldaev and Mogherini was held on the sidelines of a Kyrgyz delegation's attendance at the Brussels Conference on Afghanistan, he said.
"The sides conferred on topical internal and regional aspects of cooperation between Kyrgyzstan and the European Union and interaction prospects," he said.
"For instance, they touched upon modernization of the Kyrgyz electoral system with the EU support, a future referendum on amendments and additions to the constitution, and transformation of the OSCE Center in Bishkek into an OSCE program office," he said.
"Minister Abdyldaev said at the meeting that it was inadmissible to provide the OSCE/ODIHR platform for speeches by felons, such as Kadyrzhan Batyrov," he said.
The Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry protested against Batyrov's participation in the OSCE conference in Warsaw on September 23.
It was reported on September 30 that Kyrgyzstan intended to change the status of the OSCE Center in Bishkek to a program office focused on socioeconomic development and security projects.
Batyrov, a leader of the Uzbek community in southern Kyrgyzstan, was given a lifetime sentence in absentia for orchestrating the inter-ethnic conflict in southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010, which, according to the official data, killed 442 people.
Despite the outstanding criminal inquiry, Batyrov freely left Kyrgyzstan in June 2010. Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev ordered the Prosecutor General's Office in the middle of September to look into details of his departure and the role played in that by members of the interim government formed after the change of regime in Kyrgyzstan in April 2010.