Upbeat Turkmen opposition plans quick return home

MOSCOW, Dec 22 (Reuters) Exiled foes of Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov, spurred into action by his death, vowed today to head home quickly for what they suspected would be a messy transition of power in the autocratic Central Asian state.

Niyazov, 66, died of cardiac arrest after ruling the ex-Soviet country for more than 20 years with an often bizarre personality cult.

Hundreds of his opponents or estranged associates swept from power in periodic purges were imprisoned or fled abroad to escape crackdowns in a country where no dissent was tolerated.

''Our first task is to return to Turkmenistan within hours. We are discussing now how to do it,'' Parakhad Yklymov, Turkmen opposition activist told Reuters by telephone from Sweden, where many exiled Turkmens have settled.

''In Turkmenistan there is no opposition, they all sit in prisons or under house arrest,'' he added. ''But outside the country, opposition exists and it is coming back.'' Yklymov belongs to a group of members of a so-called Supreme Soviet of Turkmenistan in exile and an opposition Republican Party.

He came to Sweden in 2001 after serving a one-year term for tax evasion, a charge often levelled against dissenters.

His brother Sapar, a former agriculture minister, also fled to Sweden after being named by prosecutors as a ringleader of a botched assassination attempt on Niyazov in 2002.

Yklymov said it was difficult to predict events in Turkmenistan, which has no independent political institutions and whose elite has been weakened in successive reshuffles.

''Among people who surrounded Niyazov there is no one with experience in politics or the economy,'' he said. ''We have people who can run the government and the country.'' Another opposition figure, Nurmukhammed Khanamov, called on the fragmented opposition to unite.

''We do not need divergences,'' Khanamov, former ambassador to Turkey, was quoted as saying by Russia's RIA news agency. ''We need to form a single fist so as not to allow anarchy and confrontation in the country.'' Under laws adopted after the assassination attempt, the highest representative body known as Khalq Maslakhaty, or People's Council, is to hold an emergency session on Tuesday to appoint a caretaker, who in turn will call a fresh election.

The government today named Deputy Prime Minister Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov to head a commission handling Niyazov's funeral. He was later named acting president.

Yklymov said Berdymukhamedov was little known and he doubted that the official would ultimately succeed Niyazov.

REUTERS SP VV1610