Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday that the situation in Kyrgyzstan was unacceptable and called for firm action to halt the interethnic violence that has killed more than 100 people.
"The situation in Kyrgyzstan is intolerable, people have been killed, the bloodshed continues, riots along ethnic lines. This is extremely dangerous for the region, and therefore everything must be done to prevent these kinds of events - in accordance with the law, but firmly," the president said.
The government in Kyrgyzstan said on Monday that 124 people had died in ethnic clashes that began in the southern city of Osh on Thursday and have spread to the wider region. Tens of thousands of ethnic Uzbeks have fled to neighboring Uzbekistan.
Speaking with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and the secretary general of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, Nikolai Bordyuzha, at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, Medvedev added that the heads of CSTO member states could hold an urgent meeting to discuss the situation in Kyrgyzstan.
"If the situation gets worse, we do not exclude the likelihood of another meeting of the secretaries of the security councils of the CSTO member states, or even an urgent meeting of heads of CSTO member states," the president said.
The security chiefs of the countries in the post-Soviet security bloc - Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan - met in Moscow on Monday.
Kyrgyzstan's interim leader, Roza Otunbayeva, on Friday asked Medvedev to send Russian troops to help restore order in the south of the country, but so far Russia has only dispatched 150 paratroopers to beef up security at its Kant airbase near the capital, Bishkek.
"Of course, we must help them cope with these problems," Medvedev said, noting that the security council secretaries had developed proposals that CSTO heads of states would now review.
"We understand that it is a practical question," he said. "If everything happens regarding the restoration of order, we can restrict ourselves to this."
After the meeting, the CSTO said in a statement that the Kyrgyz government had not done enough to stop the violence and urged it to take all necessary steps to quickly restore order.
The Russia-dominated grouping said that the secretaries of members' security councils "developed concrete proposals aimed at reducing ethnic tensions" to present to CSTO presidents.
Medvedev said the fact that the CSTO had already met and discussed a coordinated response was already a good sign for Kyrgyzstan and the organization.
"In similar situations before we did this much slower," the Russian president said.
A source at the United Nations told RIA Novosti on Monday that the Security Council would meet later in the day to discuss the situation in Kyrgyzstan.
MOSCOW, June 14 (RIA Novosti)
