Uzbekistan government says ailing leader hospitalised

The statement did not offer any details about strongman Karimov's condition

BISHKEK, KYRGYZSTAN: Uzbekistan's cabinet of ministers said Sunday that the country's 78-year-old leader Islam Karimov has been "hospitalised", in a statement published by the country's state news agency.

The statement, widely reported by local and Russian media, did not offer any details about strongman Karimov's condition.

"According to experts, a full medical examination and follow-up treatment will take a certain time," the statement added.

Authoritarian leader Karimov has long been the subject of rumours of ill health that are difficult to verify, since information in the Central Asian country is very tightly controlled.



He has held power in Uzbekistan since before Uzbekistan's independence from Moscow in 1991.

Karimov has no obvious successor and the country has never held an election judged free and fair by international monitors.

Regional and Russian news websites reported last year that Karimov had fallen into a coma ahead of the March presidential election, but he subsequently appeared in public before the one-sided vote.

Uzbekistan is a landlocked former Soviet state with over 30 million people bordering Afghanistan.

The republic hosted from 2001 a US military base used for Afghanistan operations before an argument over the country's poor human rights record saw Washington lose access to the base in 2005.