Reports that Uzbekistan has forcibly deported Tajik citizens of Uzbek nationality threaten to heighten tension between Tashkent and Dushanbe.

According to sources at the United Nations in New York and in Central Asia, between 48 and 56 ethnic Uzbeks were rounded up on March 10, placed on buses, and sent to Tajikistan, where border guards refused them entry. The displaced were being kept in a facility near Shartuz, as Uzbek and Tajik officials negotiated their fate. Top Tajik and Uzbek officials have declined to comment on the results of emergency bilateral discussions held on March 26.

Some political observers in Tajikistan have expressed concern that the Uzbek action could be a prelude to a broader campaign of expulsions of Tajiks of Uzbek ethnicity, many of whom fled to Uzbekistan to escape the fighting during Tajikistan's civil war.

Most of those now at the Shartuz facility reportedly lived in the Surkhan-Darya area of Uzbekistan since 1997. According to local sources, they never properly registered with local authorities.

Relations between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have been frosty in recent months. Tashkent officials have complained that Islamic militants are using Tajikistan as a base for armed incursions into Uzbekistan. Tajik officials have routinely denied the accusation. At the same time, Dushanbe has protested Uzbekistan's mining of the border, saying the landmines are responsible for the deaths of Tajik civilians and livestock.

In addition to the mining of border areas, a leading Uzbek human rights advocate says Uzbek authorities have forcibly deported the populations of nine villages on the Uzbek side of the Tajik frontier, ostensibly to facilitate military operations against Islamic insurgents. Talib Yakubov, general secretary of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, added that none of the deportees reported armed activity by Islamic militants in or around the depopulated villages.