DUSHANBE, February 24, 2011, Asia-Plus — Some Tajik students studying in Libya do not want to leave the country despite the dangerous unrest there, Davlat Nazriyev, a spokesman for the Tajik Foreign Ministry, said.
According to him, Tajik Ambassador to Egypt Narzullo Nazarov managed to get in touch by phone with a group of Tajik students studying in Libya Thursday morning. “The students said that Libyan authorities have provided reliable guarding for campuses where foreign students live and asked them not to leave the country,” the spokesman said, noting that no one of Tajik students studying in Tripoli has been hurt to date.
He added that the Russian Embassy in Tripoli applied to the Russian MFA Thursday morning and expressed readiness to evacuate four Tajik nationals from Libya.
We will recall that there are 21 Tajik nationals in Libya, most of them students. On February 22, Tajik MFA formally solicited Russian help in bringing them home, as Tajikistan does not have an embassy in Tripoli.
Russia”s Emergency Situations Ministry said Moscow was ready to help evacuate Tajik citizens from Libya, but first they would try to bring all Russian citizens home.
The Tajik consul-general in Cairo, Muzaffar Muhammadi, told Radio Liberty on February 23 that most telephone and Internet connections in Libya had been cut or blocked and they couldn”t contact them. He said he hoped Russian diplomats based in Cairo and Tripoli can help them locate the Tajiks and bring them home safely.
