Problems associated with the unequal water resources of mountainous Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and their low-lying neighbours Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have at times raised fears of armed conflict.

On the second day of the 50-country forum in remote Tajikistan there was little hiding the hostility provoked by the water issue, with delegates exchanging thinly-disguised criticism.

"All the regions water comes from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, but the borders with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are only half open to us," Kyrgyz Deputy Prime Minister Bazarbai Mambetov said.

"The talks process is upset by the participants ambitions," Mambetov told

Experts warn that Central Asia is heading towards crisis as water mismanagement has already severely reduced the size of the Aral Sea, straddling Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, leaving a 400,000 square kilometer (154,450 square mile) toxic wasteland threatening some three million local residents.

The amount of irrigated land in Kazakhstan has shrunk by half, and desertification is also continuing in the other republics.

Mambetov welcomed the opportunity for public discussion, but others doubted the forums usefulness and criticised the continued harbouring of Soviet-era white elephant schemes, such as one raised by an Uzbek official at the forum to divert water thousands of miles from Russias Siberia to Central Asia.

"The impact (of the forum) in terms of helping these countries on the ground is very little," Ton Lennaerts, a consultant for the US-funded Central Asia Natural Resources Management Programme, said.

Reliance on subsistence farming and a lack of clean water means that the "big threat is of millions of people living in irrigated areas who cant bring in money to maintain the water system. It means millions of people having to pack their things to go somewhere else," Lennaerts told AFP.

The five republics hold twice-yearly meetings intended to coordinate the release and allocation of water largely on a barter basis, which is widely seen as failing to meet current needs and inflaming tensions.

Parts of Uzbekistan have suffered flooding as a result of flaws in the system while Kyrgyzstan has been deprived of natural gas from Uzbekistan in tit-for-tat moves.

Land disputes led to inter-ethnic riots in Kyrgyzstan in 1990, while water issues were rumoured to behind a military standoff at Turkmenistans border with Uzbekistan in 1995.

"It would be surprising if Uzbekistans defence planning did not include consideration of military action to protect its water supply," a recent report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group noted.

The UN's new World Water Development Report estimates that some 2.2 million people around the world died due to water-related diseases last year.

Partly due to global warming, well over two billion people will be suffering from water scarcity by the middle of this century, the report warns.

SPACE.WIRE