Baku, Azerbaijan, August 1
By Fakhri Vakilov - Trend:
Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan finally abandoned the idea of exchanging disputed areas at the border, Trend reports citing Uzbek media.
Deputy Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan Zhenish Razakov has announced this to journalists today during a press conference in Bishkek, within the framework of the visit of the head of the government of Uzbekistan Abdulla Aripov.
“About 92 percent of our border is marked, 85 percent have already been included in the main agreement on delimitation, after that another 8 percent have been marked. About 10 sites are not marked, work is underway on them. The issue of the exchange of disputed areas is not being considered and is not even worth it,” Razakov said.
A year earlier, in August 2018, the first deputy plenipotentiary representative of the Kyrgyz government in the Osh region Baiysh Yusupov announced that it was decided to transfer the land of the Kyrgyz enclave of Barak to Uzbekistan, which in exchange would provide the residents of the village of the same name with land adjacent to the border.
The head of the village, Barak Burkanbek Ashyrov, confirmed this information and stated that he had already taken part in the inspection and measurement of the land where the village was to be transferred.
However, two weeks later, the ambassador of Uzbekistan to Kyrgyzstan Komil Rashidov, stated that a possible exchange of land is not so definite. In subsequent reports on the work of the intergovernmental commission dealing with the frontier inventory, the situation with Barak was not clarified.
The reason why the exchange of land did not happen remains unknown. In his speech on August 1, Razakov did not mention not only the reasons for such a decision but also the name of Barak.
Prime Minister of Uzbekistan Abdulla Aripov arrived in Kyrgyzstan today. A meeting of the heads of government of the two countries will be held in Bishkek, after which the Prime Minister of Uzbekistan will meet with the President of Kyrgyzstan Sooronbay Jeenbekov.
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