"All of Uzbekistan's electricity networks will switch to an autonomous mode on December 1 2009," Uzbek Ambassador to Tajikistan Shoislam Shokasymov said in Dushanbe on Monday.

"This measure is intended to guarantee Uzbekistan's energy security and it allows it to maintain stable operation of its national energy system," Shokasymov said at a news conference.

"Formed in the Soviet era, the Unified Energy System of Central Asia could not function as previously after the Soviet Union's breakup," he also said.

"The absence of a single control center led to uncontrollable and unpunished tapping of electricity, and provoked conflicts, all of which damaged the security of the energy system," the Uzbek diplomat said.

Barki Tochik state energy company's spokesman Nozir Yedgori told Interfax on November 13 that technically Tajikistan cannot tap electricity from the Unified Energy System of Central Asia, because Tajikistan withdrew from the system back on October 29 over Uzbekistan's decision to do so.

Still earlier, Kanat Bozumbayev, president of the Kazakh national electricity grids company KEGOC, told the media that Kazakhstan would pull out of the system if Tajikistan continued tapping electricity from it.

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