Uzbekistan Woos U.S. With Pledge on Rights : Central Asia: But opposition leader tells Baker that the new nation is still a totalitarian regime.

With President Islam Karimov leading the way, Secretary of State James A. Baker III whipped through the capital of Tamerlane’s 14th-Century empire Sunday after an opposition leader bluntly told him that modern Uzbekistan remains a totalitarian regime despite the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Wrapping up his post-independence tour of the new governments of Central Asia, Baker obtained a promise from Karimov that Uzbekistan will brush up its human rights record and institute genuinely democratic politics.

Karimov, a former Communist Party stalwart, won 86% of the vote last December in a contested presidential election. He blamed reporters and diplomats based in far-away Moscow for spreading unfavorable reports accusing his government of suppression of dissent.

But Abdurahim Pulatov, leader of the major nationalist political group that was kept off the December ballot, said Uzbekistan is not yet a democracy.

“Politically, we have no freedom at all,” Pulatov said. “The totalitarian regime has been destroyed in Moscow, but in the localities such as Uzbekistan and specifically in Tashkent, this totalitarianism continues to exist.”

Nevertheless, Pulatov urged Washington to extend diplomatic recognition and establish an embassy in Tashkent, the capital. U.S. officials said Pulatov believes that the presence of American diplomats would make it more difficult for the government to crack down on the opposition.

Baker held separate meetings in Tashkent with Karimov and four opposition leaders, including Pulatov, before heading for Samarkand, the crossroads of the silk and gold caravan routes and, 600 years ago, the capital of Tamerlane’s Islamic empire, which stretched across much of the then-known world and included parts of Russia, China, Egypt, Turkey, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Karimov, who was born in Samarkand, served as Baker’s host, giving the president more time to press Uzbekistan’s case for U.S. diplomatic relations.

Baker, a usually-reserved diplomat who has engaged in more sightseeing on this 10-day trip than he has in many months, was decked out in a sheepskin coat and 10-gallon hat over a white shirt and tie when he started out. But along the way, he was given a traditional Uzbek black-and-white flat square hat and a long robe tied with a sash that looked like an orange and black tablecloth.

“I am delighted we had the opportunity to come,” Baker said. “When you see the kinds of things we have seen today, you have a real sense of history.”

In truth, he did not see very much. Nothing is left of Tamerlane’s city, and Baker was on the ground for only two hours, almost half of which was devoted to a lavish lunch with Karimov, so he saw only a smattering of the historical sites.

U.S. government analysts say Uzbekistan has no free press and no freedom of assembly, although the government has licensed one opposition party and permitted it to run a candidate in the last presidential election.

The State Department’s annual human rights report, issued late last month, said the Uzbek government has stifled demonstrations, jailed an opposition member of Parliament and prevented Birlik, considered the largest nationalist opposition group, to compete as a political party although it was legalized as a movement that cannot nominate candidates for office. The Islamic Rebirth Party was banned outright.

The only party allowed to field candidates was ERK, a splinter of Birlik.

Nevertheless, Karimov insisted that his nation is the closest thing to democracy in Central Asia.

“Uzbekistan is prepared to build an open society where there will be no diktat by a single party,” Karimov said. “The proof of that is the general election on an alternative (contested) basis that was held in Uzbekistan.”

Accusing news organizations and diplomats based in Moscow of reporting second- and third-hand information about his country, Karimov complained that the “Western press is more interested in pronouncing democracies in Kyrgyzstan and other places in Central Asia where there were not held elections on an alternative basis.”

U.S. government analysts say Karimov and President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan are rivals and that the Uzbek president was miffed when Washington established diplomatic relations with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan last month.

Both Nazarbayev and Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev were elected without opposition, although Akayev is a former opposition leader whom the Bush Administration considers the most democratically-inclined politician in the region.

A senior State Department official said Karimov was so anxious to obtain U.S. diplomatic recognition that, during his private meeting with Baker, he produced a notebook in which he had written the 11-point U.S. guidelines for relations with former Soviet republics. The official said Karimov announced that he was ready to live up to them all.

Later, Baker said that “rhetorical support for the principles . . . is readily acceptable to us.” But he said it is now time to put the principles into practice.

Nevertheless, Baker strongly hinted that Uzbekistan will soon get an American Embassy, probably along with most, if not all, of the former Soviet republics with which diplomatic relations have not yet been established.

“We have diplomatic relations with many countries where we disagree with the lack of political and economic freedom, and where we use those diplomatic relations to encourage greater respect for human rights, greater respect for minority rights, and greater emphasis on political and economic reform,” he said.