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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PROLIFE who wrote (749240)	9/14/2006 5:57:40 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

Uzbekistan Cracks Down on Foreign Firms New restrictions will make it harder for companies, especially from the U.S., to do business in the mineral-rich former Soviet republic businessweek.com One of the world's biggest open-pit gold mines is officially bankrupt because of a tax bill. In mid-August an Uzbek court said Zarafshan-Newmont, a joint venture 50 percent owned by the U.S. mining giant Newmont Mining, owed the state $48 million in back taxes and declared it bankrupt.... ...Michael Hall, director of Central Asia projects for the think tank International Crisis Group, believes what's going in the country “is an attempt by the governing elite of Uzbekistan to squeeze every last cent that they can out of the Uzbek economy for themselves.” “And as their opportunities to do this get fewer and fewer as the current sources of revenue dry up, they'll start looking for the last remaining untouched parts of the economy,” he said. “Obviously, the downturn in U.S.-Uzbek relations also plays into this, but this probably is more of a convenient pretext than anything else. … Karimov has to make sure that there's enough money to spread around to keep the elites happy and content so that they don't make any trouble for him.”