Should the US and Russia work together to resolve Kyrgyzstan crisis?
The United Nations says some 400,000 people have been displaced by ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, dramatically increasing the official estimate of a crisis that has left refugees reportedly without sufficient food and water in camps along the Uzbek border.
The Kyrgyzstan riots that ethnically cleansed the city of Osh of much of its Uzbek population could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.
Russia has sent humanitarian aid, and America provided the Kyrgyz government with about $1 million in emergency medical supplies. Still, neither Russia nor the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, nor the US have plans to send peacekeepers to Osh, despite calls from the Kyrgz interim government.
Both Russia and the US have military bases there and reason to want Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia, to return to stability, quickly.
As the number of those killed, injured, and displaced continue to rise and the the interim government leader Roza Otunbayeva entertains the possibility of marshal law, should Kyrgyzstan have more outside help? If so, is it possible for the US and Russia to work together on Kyrgyzstan? Though Russia had been vying to remove the US presence there, how can they work together on this? Should they?
What do you think?
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