Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Tajik capital short on wheat, gasoline due to blockade Date: Tue, 24 Nov 92 14:12:10 EST Message-ID: Lines: 70 \SE A;WORLD \SS (WS) \HD Tajik capital short on wheat, gasoline due to blockade \BY REUTERS \DT TASHKENT, Uzbekistan TASHKENT, Uzbekistan (Reuters) - Blockaded by communist rebels and swollen with thousands of refugees, the Tajik capital of Dushanbe has only a month's supply of wheat left for baking bread, local journalists said yesterday. They quoted a senior official as saying the city, rocked by intermittent fighting for months, was now being throttled by a blockade while the demand for food soared. "We have wheat stocks enough only for a month and gasoline left until the end of next week to deliver bread," said Mahmud Sabirov, in charge of Dushanbe's two bread factories. "We have more wheat stranded across the border with Uzbekistan, which we cannot deliver because trains are no longer running," he told reporters in Dushanbe. The wheat was stuck in railway cars at the Uzbek town of Karshi, he said. The railway from Tajikistan into Uzbekistan was cut early this month after a communist rebel attack outside Dushanbe. Neighboring Uzbekistan later closed its border with Tajikistan, fearing a spillover of fighting between supporters and foes of the former communist rulers of the poor Central Asian republic bordering Afghanistan and China. Mr. Sabirov said bread production in the capital, whose supply routes have been cut by pro-communist forces massing in nearby towns, nearly had doubled to 200 tons a day from 120 a month ago. "But that is not enough. We must produce more," he said. Residents in Dushanbe reported worsening food shortages yesterday, with thousands of people scrambling for bread and the price of gasoline surging to 10 times the average price of what it is in neighboring Uzbekistan. More than 110,000 refugees have been registered in the capital, many crammed into hotel rooms or government buildings, said Dieter Pfaff, Dushanbe representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). It flew in a first batch of supplies, mainly blankets, from the Ukrainian capital of Kiev on Sunday. The United Nations also was expected to start sending in humanitarian aid in the coming days, a Tashkent-based official of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said. But the collapse of political institutions will increase the problems of international relief organizations as they try to handle Central Asia's worst humanitarian crisis. The parliament, the only constitutional authority left in the republic, has yet to move to Dushanbe from the northern town of Khojand, where it has been meeting since Nov. 16 to put an end to the bloodshed. The parliament already has chosen as its new chairman a hard-liner from Kulyab, Imamali Rakhmonov. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM