Kyrgyz soldiers voted on Friday in a referendum to create the first parliamentary democracy in Central Asia, two weeks after ethnic clashes killed more than 250 people and forced hundreds of thousands to flee, according to Reuters. Nearly 2,000 soldiers filed into polling booths in a university in Osh, epicentre of the bloodshed, two days before the main round of voting which the interim government hopes will cement its rule of the poor but strategic country. "The boys are voting today so they can be on high alert on election day. They have to be free from voting to fulfil their duties on Sunday," said Abdykalyk Boltabayev, a local election commission official. The interim government, which assumed power after a popular revolt in April overthrew the president, says the plebiscite is crucial to restoring order in the south of the country after the violence between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks. The United States and Russia, which operate military bases in Kyrgyzstan, are anxious that the turmoil does not spread to other parts of Central Asia, a former Soviet region rich in oil and gas and lying on a drug-trafficking route from Afghanistan. Interim leader Roza Otunbayeva has rejected calls to postpone the referendum. She needs the vote to give legitimacy to a government that has never formally been voted in, and to pave the way for formal diplomatic recognition. Military helicopters flew low over central Osh as soldiers used tree branches to sweep dust and litter from the streets. A billboard in the city centre urged people to vote with the slogan: "Osh is our favourite city." "Of course it's scary, but we have to be out on the streets to protect the people," said Irina, an ethnic Russian sergeant in the Kyrgyz army, who declined to give her last name. "Everyone always lived in peace, side by side, but all of a sudden they are at war." DIVISIONS The clashes have deepened divisions between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, who have a roughly equal share of the population in the south. Both sides say they were attacked by the other and Otunbayeva has said up to 2,000 people may have been killed. The government did not intervene as the bloodshed erupted on June 10. Ethnic Uzbeks say government troops sided with the attackers as many Uzbek neighbourhoods of Osh were burned down. Russia declined a request to send peacekeeping troops at the height of the violence, a decision reinforced on Thursday by President Dmitry Medvedev. But the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russia-led grouping of former Soviet republics, sent its secretary general, Nikolai Bordyuzha, to Kyrgyzstan on Friday. Organising the vote in volatile southern regions -- separated from the more industrialised north by a mountain range -- will be a challenge for interim leaders who have never fully controlled the stronghold of ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev. "There is still a lot of tension. There could be provocative acts," said Mukhtar Paizyldayev, the local election commission chief in Osh. "We have asked the military to make sure no gunshots are fired on election day." He said Osh had 82 polling stations and 150,000 registered voters. But counting the population will be difficult in a region from which 400,000 mainly ethnic Uzbeks have fled, about a quarter of whom crossed the border into Uzbekistan. Tens of thousands have since returned to burned-out homes but many ethnic Uzbeks say they will not vote. Many are still barricaded inside their neighbourhoods, afraid to emerge. Election officials say mobile ballot boxes will be delivered into Uzbek neighbourhoods, escorted by security forces. But this could run the risk of provoking more violence, especially after a series of raids by security forces on Uzbek homes this week. Security officials in Osh have said the raids were necessary to seize weapons and search for missing people. Ethnic Uzbeks and human rights officials have said the raids were heavy-handed and that residents were beaten and their homes pillaged. The United Nations warned that the threat of violence had not passed. "Inter-ethnic tensions and rumours of impending violence persist," it said in a statement on Thursday.
