Nov 23 , 2009 - BBC Monitoring

Tashkent has officially warned the Tajik authorities about its withdrawal from the unified Central Asian energy system (SCAES) from 1 December 2009, the Uzbek ambassador to Tajikistan, Shoislom Shoqosimov, said at a briefing organized for local and foreign media outlets today. He also said that "decisions made by Uzbekistan are aimed at ensuring its own energy security and make it possible to secure stable functioning of its own energy system".

The diplomat said that "after the Soviet Union's collapse and establishment of independent states, the SCAES, which was set up during the USSR, could not function as in the previous mode".

[Passage omitted: the envoy spoke about inefficiency of the SCAES]

Shoqosimov said that "system failures and cases of illegally taking electricity from the unified energy system cause a serious threat to the stable and reliable functioning of the national systems". Uzbekistan considers "energy cooperation based on bilateral intergovernmental agreements in line with international practice" as a way out of the current situation.

Source: ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in Russian 1329 gmt 23 Nov 09

BBC Mon Alert CAU 231109 atd/akh

---