DUSHANBE, April 17, 2013, Asia-Plus — Rahmatillo Zoirov, leader of the Social-Democratic Party of Tajikistan (SDPT) says an interview that was posted on Iranian Radio
Sada-ye Khurasan’s
website on April 15 he gave to
Sada-ye Khurasan
more than a year ago.
According to him, somebody rediscovered this interview and links it to military exercises in Khorog in order to destabilize the situation in the country and discredit the president.
Mr. Zoirov, however, further added that it could not be ruled out that that had been initiated by the authorities themselves.
SDPT leader says that information posted on the
Sada-ye Khurasan’s
website correspondents to the facts only partly.
“I gave this interview to
Sada-ye Khurasan
more than a year ago,” said Zoirov, “I was in the Murgab district at the end of 2011 but I could not come to the borderline even from the Tajik side, because they did not allow me. Meanwhile, Chinese border guards were installing boundary pillars and wire fencing in the territory of the Murgab district, some 15-20 kilometers far from the disputable territory and I noted that time that the “border alignment” should not be carried out in such manner and assumed that it is a concession for debts to China.”
“What is the worst they spread this information at the time when the authorities, for some unaccountable reason, want to conduct large-scale military exercises in Gorno Badakhshan that will lead to destabilization of the situation in the region,” said Zoirov, “A powerful force is growing within the Tajik authorities, and this force is anti-Rahmon one. This force is involved in discrediting the central authorities; one of such examples is the last year’s clashes in Khorog.”
We will recall that SDP leader Rahmatillo Zoirov claims that China has obtained disputable territories more than Dushanbe ceded to it.
He remarked this in his interview with Iranian Radio
Sada-ye Khurasan
that was posted on
Sada-ye Khurasan’s
website on April 15. He further added that it could not be ruled out that the upcoming military exercises in Khorog were connected with that.
SDP leader also does not rule out the possibility that Tajikistan may cede one more part of the Murgab district to China in exchange for its debts.
Sada-ye Khurasan
, in particular, quoted Zoirov as saying that Chinese border guards are deployed 20 kilometers farther than its is provided for the agreement.
Zoirov also considers that sending troops to Gorno Badakhshan under the pretext of conducting anti-terror exercises in the area is connected with discussions on ceding part of border lands in the Murgab district to China and Dushanbe’s debt to Beijing.
Sada-ye Khurasan
notes that some Russian media sources have already reported that government forces were sent to Gorno Badakhshan for preventing possible protest actions of local population over ceding more border land to China in exchange for Tajikistan’s debts to China.
The Ministry of Defense of Tajikistan has denied those reports as absolutely baseless.
The territorial dispute dates back to 1884, when a border demarcation agreement between the Qing dynasty China and Tsarist Russia left large segments of the frontier in the sparsely populated eastern Pamirs without clear definition. At the time of independence, Tajikistan inherited three disputed border segments, constituting about 28,500 square kilometers, which China and the Soviet Union had been unable to resolve.
In 1999, Tajikistan and China signed a border demarcation agreement, defining the border in two of the three segments. Under the 1999 deal, Dushanbe ceded about 200 square kilometers.
Negotiations over the largest contentious border segment ended in 2002, after signing supplementary bilateral agreement in which Tajikistan agreed to cede 1,100 square kilometers of border land to China or about four percent of the territory that Beijing had claimed.
The lower house of the Tajik parliament ratified the 2002 deal on January 12, 2011. For China the deal reportedly symbolized the “final and complete solution” of its border dispute with Tajikistan.
