TASHKENT. Nov 20 (Interfax-AVN) - Uzbek border guards are concerned about the situation on their border with Tajikistan, where a border guard recently died.
"The State Border Committee of the Uzbek National Security Service is very concerned about the situation on the Uzbek-Tajik border," says a Monday statement issued by the committee.
"Twenty-four illegal actions by servicemen of the Tajik State Border Committee happened in 2006 alone," the committee claimed.
Tajik border guards "opened targeted fire at an Uzbek border patrol" on November 16. An Uzbek border guard was lethally wounded, the committee said.
"The criminal actions of the Tajik border guards, who opened targeted or, possibly, premeditated fire at the neighbor country's territory for no reason whatsoever and killed a border guard, contradict every international norm and were obviously provocative and created a hostile atmosphere on the border," the statement runs.
Meanwhile, a high-ranking source at the Tajik State Border Committee told Interfax: "Seven servicemen of the State Border Committee of the Uzbek National Security Service illegally crossed into Uzbekistan last Thursday in the Pakhtaabad zone of the Tajik-Uzbek border, 70 kilometers west of Dushanbe."
"The servicemen did not respond to the warning and the border guards had to open fire," he said. "It was early in the morning and visibility was poor. So, one of the servicemen of the State Border Committee of the Uzbek National Security Service was lethally injured and died eventually."
Political and economic relations between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are tense. The 1,283-long border has been mined and visas were introduced in 1999.