(Reuters) - Bodyguards of Kyrgyzstan's president fired shots into the air to help Kurmanbek Bakiyev escape about 1,000 opponents who disrupted a rally he was addressing on Thursday.
Bakiyev has been trying to muster support in his southern stronghold since fleeing an April 7 uprising in the capital, Bishkek, during which his troops fired repeatedly into crowds of protesters calling for his resignation.
Thursday's gunfire, in two bursts a few minutes apart, started when opponents of Bakiyev moved toward his rally from a separate gathering in support of the interim government, a Reuters reporter at the scene said.
There was no immediate sign of casualties.
"The local authorities carried out provocative acts," Bakiyev aide Ravshan Dzhamgyrchiyev told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location. He said Bakiyev was unharmed and had already left the Osh region.
"When we began our rally, groups of their bandits started throwing stones and there was a big threat to the life of the person under guard," he said.
The interim government has warned it will send special forces to arrest Bakiyev, who has mixed defiance with hints that he could go into exile if Kyrgyzstan's new leaders guarantee his safety and that of his family.
"He is pushing the country to the brink of civil war," Roza Otunbayeva, head of the interim government, told reporters in Bishkek. "The government has the power and the resources to maintain security and prevent stability from being disturbed".
The interior ministry of the new government has said it was considering sending troops to southern Kyrgyzstan, but that it would not allow a civil war.
The standoff between Bakiyev and the interim government has raised fears of further unrest in the impoverished Central Asian country where the United States rents an air base that is important for supporting the war effort in Afghanistan.
BIG POWERS
The turmoil, which disrupted troop flights this week from the U.S. base, has underlined the rivalries between the United States and Russia in Central Asia, a formerly Soviet-ruled region between China, Afghanistan and the Caspian Sea.
Russia, which also has an air base in Kyrgyzstan, sought to pressure Bakiyev to evict the United States from the air base. Washington eventually kept the base by increasing the rent.
Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake met Otunbayeva on Wednesday and said the United States was prepared to help the new government, the strongest signal of support to date from the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who on April 8 became the first world leader to recognize the interim government's authority, spoke to Bakiyev by telephone late on Wednesday at the initiative of the Kyrgyz president.
The Russian government gave no more details but Otunbayeva said she believed Bakiyev's resignation may have been discussed in the call with Putin.
"I think Bakiyev's resignation was discussed, so that he would leave the people of Kyrgyzstan in peace," said Otunbayeva, whose government says Bakiyev should face trial for the bloodshed of April 7. At least 84 people died in the uprising.
Before the gunfire in Osh on Thursday, Bakiyev tried to explain the events of April 7.
"I have come to Osh to tell you the truth about the tragic events in Bishkek last week," he said, standing underneath a banner reading: 'The opposition grabbed power. The opposition seized power with blood'.
Osh is in the Ferghana Valley, where there were violent ethnic clashes in the last days of the Soviet Union and where ethnic and tribal tensions persist.
Additional reporting by Maria Golovnina in Bishkek and Conor Sweeney in Moscow, writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Robin Paxton, editing by Robert Woodward
Reuters
