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 criticisms.

"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 also continues in the other republics.

Some doubted the usefulness of the forum -- part of the UNs "year of fresh water" -- and criticised the continued harbouring of Soviet-era white elephant schemes such as one raised by an Uzbek official to divert water thousands of miles (kilometres) from Russias Siberia to boost Central Asian cotton production.

Public discussion in the region is in any case limited due to restrictions, varying in severity, on all five countries media.

"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.

Tajik and Kyrgz plans to increase their electricity export capacity with more dams are premature until they had done more to restore basic infrastructure, strained in Tajikistans case by a civil war in the 1990s, Lennaerts said.

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 due to 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 be 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.

Mervat Tallawy, executive director of the UN office overseeing water issues in several Gulf and Middle Eastern countries, sought to allay concerns that possible agricultural development in war-torn neighbouring Afghanistan would put extra strain on the Aral Seas southern feeder river, the Amu-Darya.

"We can provide the needs of Afghanistan in extra water, we have to strengthen regional cooperation," Tallawy said.

A top Afghan official was present at the forum but pulled out of a planned news conference, while Turkmenistan was not represented at ministerial level.

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