Uzbek Leader Scorns 'Revolutions' as Nation Votes

[Khephra]

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan (Reuters) - Uzbekistan voted Sunday in a election that featured only parties loyal to autocratic President Islam Karimov, who said he would not tolerate "revolutions" such as those which shook Ukraine and Georgia.

The Central Asian state's parliamentary poll, the first stage of forming a two-chamber assembly, has been officially billed as a step toward democracy. Critics say it is a travesty of free choice in a country where thousands of dissidents are in jail and human rights abuses are said to be rife.

After voting, Karimov, an ally in Washington's war on terror and host to a key U.S. airbase, took a swipe at ex-Soviet Ukraine which was re-running a presidential poll Sunday after mass street protests against an earlier rigged ballot.

Karimov, Uzbekistan's ruler since Soviet times, scorned Ukraine's "orange revolution" and Georgia's "rose revolution" last year that brought pro-Western Mikhail Saakashvili to power after deposing President Eduard Shevardnadze.

Karimov told a news conference these events represented "internal instability multiplied by foreign interference."

"Democracy just can't be universal, as there cannot be two completely identical countries," he said. "One cannot use democracy as a means to topple state power."

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=7179742