TAJIK OPPOSITION ADVANCING.

Tajik president Imomali Rahmonov’s defense and security adviser, Zafar Ikramov, said today that opposition forces are advancing from Tavildara, aiming at this stage to seize the strategic Surkhob bridge on the Dushanbe-Garm-Badakhshan highway. Success would enable the opposition to cut the whole of central Tajikistan off from Dushanbe and take the region under control, Ikramov told the press. In Moscow, the visiting Tajik foreign minister Talbak Nazarov publicly offered the opposition seats in the Dushanbe parliament and posts in government and local administration and on the presidential staff. Moscow "understood and supported this position," Nazarov said. (Itar-Tass, August 22; Interfax, August 21) The government appears to be reeling under the pressure of opposition attacks in several parts of the country.

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