Kyrgyzstan

Here is a timeline on Kyrgyzstan in the last 20 years: June/July 1990 - Authorities sack a police chief and local government chief after the Soviet Central Asian republic of Kirghizia authorities fight to contain ethnic tension between Uzbeks and the majority Kirghiz. -- Around 300 people were killed in the clashes. Aug. 31, 1991 - The Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan declares independence from the Soviet Union. Oct. 13 - Askar Akayev, the only candidate in Kyrgyzstan's first presidential election is elected, pledging reform but rejecting a call for early democratic elections to parliament.

MOSCOW -- Suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was already a citizen of two other countries when he applied for a U.S. passport that was delayed because of charges of domestic violence. The older of the two brothers suspected in the attack last Monday used a passport issued by Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic where he and his family once lived, for international travel, according to his mother. And he was also a Russian citizen. When he returned to Russia from the United States in early 2012 to visit his father in Dagestan, a Russian republic in the North Caucasus region, he applied for a Russian internal passport to replace one he reported as lost.

A prosecutor said Monday that Kyrgyzstan would send 15 Uzbek asylum seekers back to their home country, despite pleas from the United Nations and rights groups that the move would violate international treaties on refugees. The announcement of the intended repatriations came after weeks of behind-the-scenes diplomacy about the fate of hundreds of Uzbeks who fled to neighboring Kyrgyzstan in May after Uzbek security forces violently suppressed an uprising in an eastern city. The U.N.

MOSCOW -- Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of the two brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings, called his mother Thursday morning, hours before being killed in a shootout with police, and told her he had received a call from the FBI, she said. “He would call me every day from America in the last days,” Zubeidat Tsarnaev said Sunday in a telephone interview with The Times from her home in the Russian republic of Dagestan, “and during our last conversation on the morning [before the shootout]

MOSCOW -- Suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was already a citizen of two other countries when he applied for a U.S. passport that was delayed because of charges of domestic violence. The older of the two brothers suspected in the attack last Monday used a passport issued by Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic where he and his family once lived, for international travel, according to his mother. And he was also a Russian citizen. When he returned to Russia from the United States in early 2012 to visit his father in Dagestan, a Russian republic in the North Caucasus region, he applied for a Russian internal passport to replace one he reported as lost.

This Central Asian nation said Tuesday that it is ready to accommodate warplanes from the U.S.-led anti-terrorism coalition at one of its air bases, but a senior official said the Western presence would be limited and short-term. "We have in principle confirmed our readiness to support the anti-terrorist coalition, and we are now studying their proposals," presidential advisor Askar Aitmatov said.

Opposition leaders in the small, mountainous Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan seized power in the capital early Thursday after thousands of protesters ransacked government buildings and riot police fired on crowds, killing dozens of people. The unrest appeared to have unseated the government of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who reportedly fled to the southern city of Osh. Bakiyev has led the country since 2005, when he headed the so-called Tulip Revolution that deposed autocratic leader Askar A. Akayev.

In the third largely nonviolent popular revolution to topple post-Soviet leaders in a little more than a year, opposition protesters seized control of Kyrgyzstan's main government buildings Thursday and reports spread that President Askar A. Akayev had fled the country.

A U.S. Air Force officer who was missing for three days says someone stuffed an object in her jeans pocket with a note saying it was a bomb and telling her to go to a site in Bishkek, where kidnappers grabbed her, Kyrgyz authorities said Saturday. They said Maj. Jill Metzger reported feeling as if she were in a trance as she followed the instructions. U.S. officials said the 33-year-old officer was in "stable condition" at an American base.

Acting President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, a former opposition leader who led a March revolt that ousted his predecessor, won by a landslide in balloting here Sunday, giving fresh legitimacy to his team of reformers in this mountainous Central Asian state. With 96% of the ballots counted, Bakiyev had 89% of the vote in a field of six candidates, according to the Central Election Commission website. It reported turnout at 75%, far above the 50% threshold required to make the election valid.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, came to America from central Asia about a decade ago and appeared to have embraced their new life - attending school, holding jobs, playing sports and, in the older brother's case, aspiring to represent the United States as a boxer in the Olympics. But there were signs of discontent from the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings. “I don't have a single American friend, I don't understand them,” Tamerlan Tsarnaev said, as reported in an online photo essay that shows him training for a boxing competition.

Which designers does Hillary Rodham Clinton wear? An interviewer in Kyrgyzstan got the equivalent of the hand when he asked the secretary of State that question during a panel discussion in December 2010. Clinton's response: "Would you ever ask a man that question?" Her comment went viral Tuesday -- way after the fact -- when Boston Review posted that snippet from the interview on its Tumblr page . What's especially cringeworthy about this exchange is that just moments before, Clinton had addressed a young lawyer's question about how women could succeed in today's world.

George Pendle began his website, http://www.carpetsforairports.com , in late 2009 and, so far, has amassed photos and critiques of flooring at about 120 airports worldwide. In his own words, he reviews each carpet, raving about some — including the flooring in Los Angeles (LAX) and Bermuda (BDA) — and ranting about others such as in Cairo (CAI) and Osh, Kyrgyzstan (OSS). LAX: "A serene storm of blues, it entices the weary traveler to look deep into its loom, to lose oneself within the weft and warp until he or she realizes — too late — that their gate has closed and they've missed their flight.

A Moscow-led security organization Monday recommended offering logistical support and goods such as fuel to Kyrgyzstan rather than peacekeeping troops to help stop ethnic violence in the Central Asian country. Kyrgyzstan law enforcement organizations, with some help, can control the rioting that began Thursday in Osh, said Nikolai Bordyuzha, secretary-general of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which is made up of several former Soviet republics, including Russia and Kyrgyzstan.

The number of dead from ethnic rioting in Kyrgyzstan "should be multiplied several times" from the official toll of 176, said interim President Roza Otunbayeva, as tens of thousands of people fled to neighboring Uzbekistan and thousands more remained trapped Tuesday after that border was closed. Although the violence appeared to subside Tuesday, Otunbayeva said she was negotiating with Russian leaders to deploy Russian troops to the conflict zone in the country's south because the Kyrgyz army and police are unable to maintain order.

In a desperate bid to stop the spread of ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, the interim government Sunday mobilized hundreds of reservist troops and issued a decree authorizing soldiers to shoot to kill rioters. The move came after Moscow denied a request Saturday by interim President Roza Otunbayeva to send in Russian troops to quash the ethnic riots in the former Soviet republic. More than 100 people have been killed in three days of fighting that began with clashes between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek ethnic groups in the city of Osh and has since spread to other areas of the south, including Jalal-Abad, according to news reports and officials.

Prosecutors charged a prominent Kyrgyzstan opposition leader with murder in a case that government critics say is politically motivated. Alikbek Jekshenkulov was accused of involvement in the shooting of a Turkish citizen in late 2007 and illegal possession of a weapon, said his lawyer, Nina Zotova. Interior Ministry officials say forensic experts concluded that casings and a bullet found at the scene of the killing in the northern town of Talas were discharged by a handgun belonging to Jekshenkulov.

American troops can stay at a Kyrgyz air base for as long as they are needed to bring stability to Afghanistan, officials told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday. The remarks came at a time when the future of the U.S. military presence here and elsewhere in Central Asia has come into question. A July 5 statement by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, of which Kyrgyzstan is a member, called for a timetable for eventual U.S. withdrawal. Maj. Gen.

Ethnic violence that began as fistfights and escalated to raging gun battles broke out in the Central Asia nation of Kyrgyzstan, leaving at least 45 people dead and more than 600 injured, Russian news reports and an eyewitness said Friday. The clashes in the southern city of Osh began Thursday evening between several hundred Kyrgyz and Uzbek youths, said the witness, human rights activist Almaz Kalet. Combatants at first battled with fists, sticks and metal rods, but by about 2 a.m. Friday their numbers had grown to several thousand and they were fighting across the city center using automatic rifles, shotguns and other weapons, Kalet said in a telephone interview from Osh, where he lives.

Kyrgyzstan's government appealed to Russia on Saturday to send troops to the former Soviet republic in a desperate attempt to stop the ethnic riots that have rocked a southern city and left 77 people dead. Interim President Roza Otunbayeva said she had sent an official letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and discussed with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin the deteriorating situation in Osh, where residents described a city out of control. "We are waiting for news from the Russian Federation now," Otunbayeva said in televised remarks after the phone conversation with Putin.