By empty (4/17/2002 issue of the CACI Analyst)

After garnering the required number of signatures to force a special session of parliament, the opposition attempt to pass its proposed amendments to the law on the media failed to gain a quorum of the 131-seat legislature on 16 April. The opposition is seeking to reinstate the suspended A1+ independent television station and replace the government-appointed broadcasting commission. The move was blocked by the parliament's largest faction, the Unity bloc, and the pro-government Armenian Revolutionary Federation.

By empty (4/17/2002 issue of the CACI Analyst)

In a statement published on 17 April, Turkmenistan's former Prime Minister Aleksandr Dodonov announced that he is joining the opposition National Democratic Movement of Turkmenistan group based in Moscow. The 55-year-old Dodonov, who also served as water resources minister from 1996 to 1998, accused President Saparmurat Niyazov of "usurping all branches of power," and said Niyazov's "dilettantist" interventions in economic matters, particularly problems of agriculture and irrigation, threaten to lead the country to ruin. He added that the government's "fantastic" statistics on record-breaking plantings and harvests were myths.

By empty (4/17/2002 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Uzbekistan's official commercial exchange rate plunged from 920 soms per dollar to 1,400 soms per dollar on 15 April as banks set their exchange rates practically to match the real, black-market rate. The black-market rate stands at about 1,450 soms per dollar. Unification of currency exchange rates by the end of June 2002 is a key requirement of the IMF structural reform plan that Tashkent agreed to earlier this year.