Central Asian Countries Call for Help to Solve Aral Sea Problem

Excerpt from report by privately-owned Tajik Avesta website on 30 May

Dushanbe, 30 May: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan have held a seminar at the UN headquarters in New- York to call on the international community to pay attention to the serious ecological crisis in the Aral Sea basin and help them to solve this problem.

The chairman of the seminar, Uzbekistan’s permanent representative to the UN, Alisher Vohidov, said that owing to irrational use of water resources of the [rivers of] Amu Darya and Syr Darya over the last 50 years, the Aral Sea faces the threat of drying out and the Aral Sea basin faces a huge catastrophe: spread of diseases, lack of drinking water, desertification of lands, biological reduction.

[Passage omitted: known details about the Aral Sea]

Originally published by Avesta website, Dushanbe, in Russian 0253 30 May 08.

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