At a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the CIS countries in Astana,, the head of Tajik MFA Sirojiddin Muhriddin expressed his country’s official position regarding border disputes with Kyrgyzstan. He pointed out that on September 14-17, “a pre-planned military aggression of Kyrgyzstan against Tajikistan took place on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border, as a result of which more than 50 people were killed and about 200 civilians were injured”, Tajik MFA reported.
At the same time, he did not mention the losses of the Kyrgyz side and the consequences of the military conflict for residents of local villages in the conflict zone.
Meanwhile, as a result of the conflict, the Kyrgyz side lost 63 people, of which 40 people were military personnel, and the rest were local residents. More than 200 people were injured. More than 150 000 people were forced to flee their places of residence. Over 400 houses became uninhabitable.
Mukhriddin at a meeting said that over the twenty-year history of the Tajik-Kyrgyz negotiations on the division of the border, dozens of protocols have been signed, which, according to him, “with a change in the political alignment of the neighboring country, are reviewed and disavowed,” referring to the changes of power in Kyrgyzstan.
The head of the Tajik Foreign Ministry called the mention of the Agreement on the establishment of the CIS and the Alma-Ata Declaration an insinuation by the Kyrgyz side, presenting them as a legal basis for determining the state border.
In his opinion, “the subject of regulation of these two documents is not the issue of determining the course of the border line. In this regard, the CIS member states were informed that the only legal basis for continuing the negotiation process is the documents of the national-territorial delimitation of Central Asia of 1924-1927, which have passed all constitutional procedures,” Muhriddin said.
Together with an appeal to the Kyrgyz side to refrain from escalating the situation, strictly implement the signed protocols and strictly control the progress of their implementation, Mukhriddin said that Tajikistan is committed to resolving all issues with Kyrgyzstan exclusively by political and diplomatic means.
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have over 940 km of common border. At this point, the parties have agreed on more than 55% of the border line. The main dispute between the two countries is over the division of the border between the Sughd region of Tajikistan and the Batken region of Kyrgyzstan, on the territory of which the largest Tajik enclave of Vorukh is located. It is on this section of the border that armed clashes between residents of the two countries often occur.
inozPRESS.kg,
Oct. 13, 2022