Shymkent, 18 July: Kazakhstan will stop importing electricity from Kyrgyzstan if the neighbouring countries do not fulfil [their] obligations in regulating water flows in the region.

"We have reported to the (Kazakh) prime minister about the current situation, and reached an agreement that we need to take harsh measures. Kazakhstan should not beg for the water which it is entitled to. We gave our partners in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan until Monday [21 July]. Kazakhstan will stop buying electricity from Kyrgyzstan if water is not supplied to the Dostyk channel by that time," the chairman of the committee for water resources of the Kazakh Ministry of Agriculture, Anatoliy Ryabtsev, said at a news conference in Shymkent today.

At the same time, he said that "consultations with power engineering specialists have already been held, and a plan of substitution for Kyrgyz electricity has been drawn up". "We had better use the money being spent on expensive Kyrgyz electricity to compensate for cotton-growers' losses, which they will incur if the situation with irrigation water does not change," he said.

He recalled that "in line with an agreement, Kazakhstan buys electricity from Kyrgyzstan and gets irrigation water in return".

[Passage omitted: background on water and electricity supplies]

Originally published by Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency, Almaty, in Russian 1646 18 Jul 08.

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Story Source: BBC Monitoring Newsfile