OSCE to boost Kyrgyzstan police

European organisation to send multinational force to help tackle ethnic tensions.

Nursultan Nazarbayev chairs OSCE conference in Kazakhstan

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), currently chaired by Kazakhstan, has decided to send a multinational force of 50 to 100 police to help deal with ethnic tensions in Kyrgyzstan.

Hundreds have died since protests in April led to a state of emergency and exploded into June riots between the country’s two main ethnic groups – Uzbeks and Kyrgyz.

Marc Perrin de Brichambaut, the OSCE secretary-general, told Al Jazeera that the police are “not peacekeepers, in the UN sense. They are people who will be embedded with the Kyrgyz police to try to assist them and to encourage them to do the right things”.

Source: Al Jazeera