The European Union's commissioner for emergency aid is to take to member states a request from Kyrgyzstan for EU support, including policing, following the country's bloody ethnic fighting, she told journalists on Monday dpa reported
An estimated 2,000 people died in fighting between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in and around the southern city of Osh after a popular uprising toppled authoritarian president Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
EU commissioner Kristalina Georgieva visited the region at the weekend.
"I will report ... on what I heard from the people in Osh and the authorities: a plea for Europe to step up and provide police support, training for police officers, and a presence that would assure both sides of some neutrality," Georgieva said.
Diplomats from EU member states are set to meet in Brussels to discuss security issues on Tuesday, and EU foreign ministers are due to hold their regular monthly meeting on July 26.
Kyrgyz leaders, including Interim President Rosa Otunbayeva, have also asked for an international inquiry into the fighting. Some sources have suggested that Bakiyev, whose power base is in southern Kyrgyzstan, was behind the flare-up.
"I have heard from many sources that they are convinced it was premeditated but they will not speculate who was behind it. My view is that this is why we need an international inquiry: we need an objective group of people to get to the bottom of it," Georgieva said.
Georgieva is tasked with organising the EU's response to humanitarian disasters, and has no direct say over foreign policy.
However, she is the highest-level EU official to have visited Kyrgyzstan since the fighting and the first to have done so since Otunbayeva's inauguration, giving her words some weight