US hands Nurzhan depots to emergency administration

NURZHAN — The United States yesterday handed control of the Nurzhan depots, with their T-72 tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery and Mi-24 helicopters, to the ISEZ emergency administration. The handover was signed at the depot gates by an American officer and a representative of the administration in a short ceremony closed to the public.

A US military spokesman at Talas Air Base said the equipment was being transferred "to the authority now in control of the area, in the interest of order and the protection of civilians". The depots have been guarded by American contractors since the territorial period, and their contents have been the subject of rumour in Nurzhan since the Soviet garrison left in 1992.

An official of the emergency administration said former Guard crews would begin training on the armour this week with foreign instructors, and that the vehicles would be "in service within weeks". He would not say who the instructors were or how the administration would obtain ammunition for Soviet-calibre weapons.

The Popular Front, which has withdrawn from Talas to the countryside since the storming of the city on 4 June, said in a statement read on a Front radio station that the handover was "an act of war by a foreign power". Residents of the streets around the depots said they had seen tank transporters on the Nurzhan ring road on Sunday night.