Eur-ope's main security body on Thursday backed plans to send 52 unarmed police officers to help restore peace in southern Kyrgyzstan, a month after the worst bloodshed in the Central Asian state's modern history. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said its 56-nation permanent council had voted to deploy the mission in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic that hosts US and Russian military air bases.
The officers should start arriving around mid-August and will advise and monitor local Kyrgyz police, the OSCE said. "We know from many sources that the trust has been destroyed and lost - the trust between the law enforcement forces and major parts of the population," Herbert Salber, head of the OSCE's Conflict Prevention Centre, told reporters.
"So there is something to be restored and repaired. That is one major task of this police advisory group," he said in Vienna where the OSCE is based. At least 300 people, and possibly hundreds more, were killed in several days of clashes in June between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks.