Uzbek Refugees Are Forced To Wait Out Diplomatic Storm

Much about the Andijan episode remains murky. No one has identified the armed men who moved among the protesters (in contrast to the Kyrgyz uprising, which was essentially bloodless). The men abducted government officials, witnesses said, and used them as human shields.

Karimov, whose government has jailed thousands of religious activists, calls the demonstrators terrorists.

"That is his hobby. He calls everybody terrorists," said a refugee who gave her name as Nova. She gestured toward women sewing beaded bags as gifts for the aid workers and journalists who visit the camp, a tidy site tucked between foothills where Kyrgyz men are stationed, either as protectors or guards. "Do we look like terrorists?"

The most active radical Muslim group in Uzbekistan today is Hizb ut-Tahrir, which promotes a utopian fundamentalist vision of a worldwide caliphate but insists that it rejects violence. The group denies any involvement in the Andijan uprising.

In an interview, one prominent Hizb ut-Tahrir member alleged that agents of Uzbekistan's secret police came to the group in February offering cash to mount such an uprising in the city. "But we refused," Dilyor Jumabaev said in the interview on the Kyrgyz side of Kara-Suu, a border town. "They said they were sick and tired of Karimov's regime. But we said, 'After Karimov will come another Karimov.' We said such things are sin. We did not participate."

Meanwhile, the pressure mounts on Kyrgyzstan, which has a population of 5 million, compared with Uzbekistan's 26 million, and recognizes its neighbor's power. In the past, Uzbek troops have crossed the border in the name of chasing terrorists. The country has also cut off natural gas lines into Kyrgyzstan, a lifeline in the winter.

Uzbekistan is also pressuring the United States, sharply restricting flights to a U.S. air base in the country after the State Department condemned the Andijan shootings. This month, Russia and China joined other Central Asian countries in declaring that Washington should set a date for shuttering U.S. bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan that were opened in advance of the war on Afghanistan.

U.S. officials warn that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will not attend the upcoming inauguration of Kyrgyzstan's president-elect, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, if he turns over more refugees.

"People hope for a compromise," said Gulaki Mamasalieva, a civic activist in the southern city of Osh. Some residents there fear letting refugees stay would worsen pressure for land.

U.N. officials say the apparent solution lies in coaxing third countries to accept the refugees for resettlement. The priority is 29 refugees whom Kyrgyz authorities jailed at Uzbekistan's behest and who are believed to be in the most imminent danger. Jerzy Skuratowicz, the top U.N. official in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, said he was working to win Kyrgyzstan's approval of the third-country option.

Human rights groups noted with approval that Kazakhstan, the oil-rich behemoth that looms over Central Asia, recently defied Uzbekistan's demand that it extradite a prominent Andijan eyewitness.

Skuratowicz, noting Kyrgyzstan's successful election, said: "I would say this is the time when the change of the political elites has come. The question is how this change is taking place -- whether it's the old Soviet model, or some new ways are learned. These things are intertwined, and the roles of the big powers and the rivalries between them are having an impact."

Outside her tent, Nova saw it more simply. "They are playing with our souls," she said.