The newspaper noted that complaints about human rights and state control over the media in Russia got relatively little attention in the closing comments of the Group of Eight ministers who met in Moscow on Thursday to prepare for a G8 summit on July 15-17, AFP noted.

The visiting foreign ministers "conceded all the demands of Russia and" in their closing declaration "kept to a minimum mention ... of questions that in some way bother Russia," the newspaper said.

Thursday's meeting followed pressure from leading US lawmakers for President George W. Bush to take a tough stand on Russian democracy at next month's summit, the first to be hosted by Russia, AFP stated.

There had been no discussion, Kommersant said, of the so-called "frozen conflicts" in two ex-Soviet states, Georgia and Moldova, or the situation in Belarus, which is a close ally of Russia's.

But Washington's demands for support on the Iranian nuclear standoff might prove hard for Moscow to stomach, the paper said.

Moscow remains an ally of Tehran and has called for a diplomatic solution to the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme, which Iran says is peaceful but the United States suspects is a front for developing nuclear weapons, AFP added.

"In the Kremlin they think Washington is asking too much, not offering anything in exchange. This situation offends and annoys the Russian leadership... The utterances of senior Russian officials have more and more taken on a highly emotional tone," Kommersant said.

Over the clink of glassware, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov challenged U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about proposed language in a statement on behalf of the foreign ministers from the Group of Eight industrial democracies. "I don't believe security is fine in Iraq, and I don't believe in particular that security at foreign missions is OK," Lavrov said, referring to the killing of five Russian diplomats in Iraq.

"Sergei, there is a need for improvement of security in Iraq, period," Rice replied in a steely tone. "The problem isn't diplomatic missions," she said. "The problem is journalists and civilian contractors and, yes, diplomats as well. The problem is you have a terrorist insurgent population that is wreaking havoc on a hapless Iraqi civilian population that is trying to fight back and on a coalition force that is trying to fight back, and the implication that by somehow declaring that diplomats need to be protected . . . I think is simply not right."

The two dominated a discussion of a proposed international compact on Iraq aid and political development, an idea supported by the U.S. Rice wanted the G8 statement to endorse the compact, but Lavrov held her off.

"Look, Condi, Condi . . . when we consider assistance programs, IMF and the World Bank, you do not automatically endorse something that a government endorses," Lavrov told her. "It's an important part of the exercise to consider specific features of an assistance program."

In the end, the G8 statement refers to the proposed compact but does not endorse it.

The United Nations and Iraq are expected to unveil the compact next week in Baghdad. It would condition international aid for Iraq's new democratic government on benchmarks of political and structural development, such as making and keeping a disciplined national budget.

Russia has been a consistent critic of the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq and has been the main obstacle to the U.S. drive to impose sanctions on Iran if it will not give up disputed aspects of its nuclear program.

The Bush administration has been critical of democratic backsliding under Russian President Vladimir Putin, but the strongest criticism has come from Vice President Dick Cheney, not Rice.

Rice acknowledges that the U.S. needs Russian help on Iran, which was the main topic of Thursday's meetings. The issue did not come up during the portion of the lunch discussion caught on tape.

I write in my upcoming book Silk Road to Ruin : Is Central Asia the New Middle East?: "Within weeks Uzbekistan was in the throes of a brutal purge of its already beleaguered religious Muslims. That month a presidential decree authorized the punitive arrest of a suspect's father if his extremist sons could not be found. 'If my child chose such a path,' Karimov said, 'I myself would rip off his head.' Head-ripping was a recurring theme of Karimov's rhetoric. He added a promise to 'tear off the heads of two hundred people in order to protect Uzbekistan's freedom and stability.' It is unknown whether Karimov personally supervises such reprisals; however, published reports claim that exactly that number of bodies of 'Muslim extremists'--often the victims are identified as radicals simply because they wear long beards--were strung up from Tashkent lampposts in May. Exceptionally violent and corrupt even by Central Asian standards, the government of Uzbekistan is proof that a ruler can remain in power despite the near-universal contempt of his subjects."

Karimov's police state is pervasive and brutal. Torture is endemic; the battered bodies of political prisoners are returned to their families showing clear proof that they have been boiled to death. Only one candidate, Abdulhasiz Dzhalalov, was allowed to run against the autocratic Karimov in the most recent presidential "election." Dzhalalov announced that he had voted for Karimov.

After 9/11, however, the U.S. ignored numerous reports of Uzbek atrocities--some authored by its own State Department--and began paying Karimov millions of dollars in exchange for hosting a permanent American military base on Uzbek soil. "The expanded relationship," writes The New York Times, "was both praised as realpolitik strategy and criticized as a shortsighted gesture of support for a dictator with a chilling human rights record."

Bush's pact with the devil came due on May 13, 2005, when thousands of protesters gathered in Bobur Square in the southern city of Andijon to complain about corruption, the shattered Uzbek economy and to demand the release of political prisoners. "We hoped the local government would come to hear our grievances," a man named Dolim told The Guardian. "People said even Karimov himself would come. We went because of unemployment, low salaries not paid, pensions not received."

Indeed, Karimov did go to Andijon--to personally supervise the massacre of the demonstrators.

Uzbek security forces firing automatic weapons killed an estimated one thousand people over the course of 90 minutes. "The dead were lying in front of me piled three-thick," said a survivor. "At one point, I passed out. When I regained consciousness, it was raining--on the ground, I could see water running with blood." He survived by hiding under corpses. "Dead people everywhere, and some alive, just moving. I felt sick, because of all the things splattered on my clothes. I went into the college and saw the armored personnel carriers moving over the bodies. They wanted to kill anyone who was wounded. Soldiers walked down the sidewalk, firing single shots at anyone moving."

The Bush Administration resisted international pressure to close its airbase at Karshi-Khanabad (K-2). "The Pentagon wants to avoid upsetting the Uzbekistan government," The Washington Post quoted White House officials two months after the Andijon massacre. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman urged the Uzbeks to investigate themselves: "The United States has repeatedly urged Uzbekistan to undertake a full and transparent inquiry into the Andijon incident."

Even this pro forma criticism proved too much for the testy tyrant, prompting him to evict the U.S. from K-2 earlier this year. But Andijon refuses to go away. On June 22 The New York Times released a detailed analysis of videotapes taken before and during the bloody crackdown. The images "show no sign that [Uzbek authorities] tried nonlethal methods or a gradual escalation of force to break up the crowd, like giving clear warnings or signals to disperse, using water cannons or tear gas, or having snipers eliminate [men who were armed]."

Despite the United States' loss of an airbase and a new mutual defense treaty between Tashkent and Moscow, however, the Bush Administration continues to ply the butcher of Andijon with cash and military aid.

From Silk Road to Ruin: "RAND Corporation pundit Olga Oliker summarized the Bush Administration's position: 'Cutting all ties between the two nations would be a mistake,' Oliker wrote, because 'the country remains a way station for illegal and dangerous trafficking in drugs, weapons and fighters. This has made the Uzbek government a valuable partner in combating those problems.' True, the weapons and the insurgents who carry them drew much of their strength from Karimov's campaign of anti-Muslim repression. But let's not forget the United States' primary policy motivation: Uzbekistan has some of the world's largest reserves of natural gas."

"Internal developments in Uzbekistan are really worrisome," says Royal Institute of International Affairs analyst Yury Federov. "The ruling regime keeps itself in power through repression, and many people in Uzbekistan believe that repression in the final end cannot save the current regime from the crash, which may lead, in turn, to a general destabilization of the situation in the country and in the neighboring region."

It's 1981 all over again. And again, we're arming and funding Saddam.

Ted Rall is the author of "Silk Road to Ruin : Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge. Visit his website www.tedrall.com

Huseyincan Celil, who fled China in the 1990s, was arrested in Uzbekistan in March. His supporters say he may face the death penalty if tried in China, which has waged a long campaign against Uighur separatism.

Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs account for 8 million of the 19 million people in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang.

"Uzbekistan has extradited to China a terrorist who has committed a number of crimes in that country and who is also wanted by Interpol," Uzbekistan's state-backed press-uz.info news Web site reported.

Interpol and officials in China and Uzbekistan were not available for comment. The Web site is often used by the Uzbek authorities to make statements on sensitive issues.

Uighur activists say they fear China could put Celil, 37, on trial and execute him. Celil has three children in Canada.

China accuses Celil of taking part in a "terrorist attack" on a government delegation in Xinjiang in 2000, as well as murdering an Uighur in Kyrgyzstan, the Uzbek news agency said.

Canada has pressed Uzbekistan to let him go on humanitarian grounds. Canada angered Uzbekistan last year when it agreed to resettle 50 Uzbek refugees who fled to neighbouring Kyrgyzstan after Uzbek security forces fired on crowds in the town of Andizhan when they put down an uprising.

Separately, Amnesty International called on China to release two Uighurs, who it said were forcibly returned from neighbouring Kazakhstan in May and now face "serious human rights violations", including torture and possibly the death penalty.

"Over recent years, Amnesty International has monitored growing numbers of forced returns of Uighurs to China from several of its neighboring countries, including those of Central Asia, such as Kazakhstan," it said in a statement.

At least 1,770 people were executed and 3,900 sentenced to death in China in 2005, Amnesty said, adding that "the true figures, which are classified as a 'state secret', are believed to be much higher."

Blogs, bulletin boards and searches are targeted because they are the 'most active parts of China information industry,' Cai said.

'The market cannot develop without efficient management,' said Cai, adding that the government planned to improve its technology and develop 'admittance standards' websites hosting blogs for China's estimated 111 million internet users.

'We will speed up the technology development to safeguard the network management and do more researches on the internet security issues triggered by the new technologies of blogs and search engines,' Minister of the Information Industry Wang Xudong was quoted as saying.

Wang said China also planned to ensure that all websites were officially registered and enforce a requirement for all telephone subscribers to register their real names, the agency said.

China already has some 37 million blog sites and is forecast to have some 60 million by the end of this year, it quoted a report by Beijing's Qinghua University as saying.

Major Chinese internet search engine providers grouped together two years ago to form a 'self-discipline organization' and take a stand against 'pornographic and obscene websites,' the agency said.

In May, China's leading internet search engine, Baidu, said it had amassed more than 100,000 entries in a censored version of US-based online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which is blocked in China.

Baidu bans content in seven categories, warning users that it will delete entries that make a 'malicious evaluation' of China, 'attack government institutions' or 'promote a negative view of life.'

It employs 'experts' to 'ensure the quality of entries and keep the site free of advertisements and junk information,' the Shanghai Daily newspaper quoted a Baidu official as saying.

China's internet police block hundreds of websites that are deemed politically sensitive and try to keep content broadly in line with the ruling Communist Party's ideology.

Tens of thousands of small internet cafes have been closed, with the government favouring large chains that can be relied upon to monitor and control online activity.

Evidence from postings on websites has also been used in the conviction of several dissidents in recent years.