This week in Central Asia - more than three months after Uzbek security forces violently suppressed protests in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan - the US re-iterated its calls for an independent international probe into what happened.

"We've been very clear that the Uzbek government needs to let in an international team, needs to be fully transparent in investigating and allowing an international investigation of what happened at Andijan," US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Wednesday. "We continue to call for them to allow an international investigation," he said, noting they had yet to receive a positive response.

Rights activists say upwards of 1,000, mainly unarmed civilians, could have been killed in Andijan in May when security forces opened fire indiscriminately on thousands of demonstrators. Tashkent said the death toll was 187.

In Kyrgyzstan, a decision on the plight of 15 Uzbek asylum seekers who fled violence in Andijan and who have been held in custody in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh since May would be made within 10 days, the national news agency Kabar reported on Thursday.

Azimbek Beknazarov, Kyrgyzstan's prosecutor general, said that his office was currently conducting an additional check of documents presented by the Uzbek law-enforcement agencies, who accuse those being detained of committing grave crimes and want them extradited to Uzbekistan.