Interview with Craig Murray from Eurasia Net

By EurasiaNet

Uzbekistan has emerged as an unlikely central election issue, as Britain’s ousted ambassador to Tashkent, Craig Murray, challenges his former boss, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Murray is running on an independent ticket, and is making British foreign policy towards Uzbekistan and Iraq a central issues of his campaign. In the last general election, Straw won the Blackburn race by winning only 53 per cent of the votes cast.

Blackburn’s Muslim voters

Ordinary voters “are not really that interested in Uzbekistan”, Murray recently told a EurasiaNet correspondent in an interview. However, a large percentage of Blackburn’s voters are Muslims, and Murray hopes to tap into their dissatisfaction over Straw’s support of the global “war on terror” and detention-without-trail of co-religionists in Britain. Furthermore, the local Labour party has been hit by accusations of corruption, with one official imprisoned in early April for ballot-fraud in local elections. A leaked Labor memo suggests that the party leadership regards the seat as at-risk, and early opinion polls have shown the party’s lead very rapidly narrowing. Whatever happens on 5 May, Murray has ensured that Britain’s uncomfortable alliance with Uzbekistan will receive public scrutiny…. see other stories on this site re Uzbekistan

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