OSH, Kyrgyzstan—This Central Asian nation's interim leader toured the shattered city at the epicenter of ethnic violence that threatens to rip her country apart, and promised to rebuild. But her four-hour visit Friday did little to overcome the Uzbek minority's deep distrust in a government dominated by ethnic Kyrgyz. Interim President Roza Otunbayeva, citing security concerns, didn't set foot in Uzbek neighborhoods, which bore the brunt of a four-day spree of killing, burning and looting and have isolated themselves behind makeshift barricades. She fended off charges that the army joined with marauding gangs of Kyrgyz civilians and that her government moved sluggishly to contain them and a burgeoning humanitarian crisis. Ms. Otunbayeva suggested the death toll could be close to 2,000—or 10 times the 192 counted by the Health Ministry—while the United Nations raised its estimate of the number of displaced and others needing emergency aid to as many as one million. "Leave us some hope!" she told residents gathered in Osh's main square. "Stop saying that we are not working. Our forces say they are coping." Yet the violence, which erupted June 10, leaves the interim government struggling to assert authority in the south and challenges Ms. Otunbayeva's shaky hold on power, as well as U.S. strategic interests. On the eve of her visit, a senior Kyrgyz official said the U.S. could lose its air base in the north, which supplies military operations in Afghanistan, if Britain doesn't extradite Maksim Bakiyev to face accusations that he and his father, deposed President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, fomented the recent violence. Authorities in the U.K., which doesn't have an extradition treaty with Kyrgyzstan, declined to comment. Ms. Otunbayeva, whose government took over after President Bakiyev's ouster in April, didn't comment on the U.S. military presence. During a flyover in an army helicopter, Ms. Otunbayeva glimpsed a stark urban landscape—much of it ruined, abandoned and chopped up by barricades made of fallen trees or burned-out cars. With violence subsiding in recent days, Osh residents have voiced alarm about the long-term damage to a fabric of ethnic co-existence that has bound the former Soviet republic and its 5.3 million people. "The hot war is over," said Gulbakhor Dzhurayeva, head of the women's committee of Onadyr, an Uzbek neighborhood that documented 53 dead, at least one rape victim and 3,000 homeless. "What we're witnessing now is a cold war, and it will drag on unless the interim authorities take appropriate measures toward reconciliation." Ms. Dzhurayeva and other Uzbek leaders have demanded an impartial inquiry into the cause of each death and the army's actions. Otherwise, they say, their communities will boycott a June 27 referendum that proposes to extend Ms. Otunbayeva's presidency and enshrine a new constitution. Witnesses in Osh say men in military uniform fired at Uzbek residents from armored personnel carriers. Government officials deny the army took part in attacks on Uzbeks. Defense Minister Ismail Isakov said 3,000 Kyrgyz rioters, including 500 hired by Maksim Bakiyev, took over two armored personnel carriers and stockpiles of weapons from poorly staffed army posts. Dozens of instigators have been arrested, he said. Many Kyrgyz, including some officials, say ethnic Uzbek leaders provoked the violence with demands for greater political autonomy in the south. What is clear, from interviews with witnesses on both sides, is that the government didn't intervene quickly to prevent the spread of violence. Homes and businesses on both sides were reduced to rubble, with the bulk of the damage in Uzbek areas, some near military checkpoints. Ms. Otunbayeva, criticized for aloofness during the crisis, landed in Osh wearing a flak jacket and a helmet. She said she came "to see, to speak with the people and hear firsthand what happened." "We have always lived together and we always will live together," she said. Khalikulov Tursun-Ali, an Uzbek veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, faulted her decision to avoid Uzbek neighborhoods. "She's being told by the Kyrgyz that Uzbeks were the aggressors," he said. "If she believes, as she's said many times, that she's president for everyone, then she should listen to both sides." The government has taken steps to restore confidence. The defense minister and Osh police chief Kursan Asanov, both Kyrgyz, have met with Uzbek elders and allowed their neighborhoods to maintain barricades. Mr. Asanov said in an interview, he has negotiated the release of 600 Uzbeks and 300 Kyrgyz held or trapped in hostile neighborhoods. But neither side is satisfied. The police chief, a burly man with a pistol in a shoulder holster, is confronted daily by angry Kyrgyz women demanding that his men tear down the Uzbek barricades and seek out missing loved ones. "It's time to stop negotiating and use force," said Jarkhanai Osorova, 26 years old, whose husband vanished Monday after finishing his shift as a traffic policeman near an Uzbek neighborhood. "We spoke to the president today and she promised stronger action." In Onadyr, the hard-hit Uzbek neighborhood, residents said they would have opened their barricades and welcomed the president. They complained that Kyrgyz officials had ignored their appeals for help. "Now we'll trust our fists more than we'll trust the interim government," said Aibek Miralimov, 23, speaking of revengerecovering from a bullet wound in Onadyr's clinic. Abdurakhman Nasyrov, a 25-year-old Kyrgyz, voiced frustration that the police have failed to regain control of Nariman, a sealed-off Uzbek neighborhood where his oil products trading facility was looted and burned. An Uzbek mob, he said, destroyed five computers and made off with two trucks and a safe holding $120,000 in cash. The Uzbek night watchman was beaten. Without a genuine reconciliation with Uzbeks, Mr. Nasyrov said, new bloodshed is inevitable. "This is our land, Kyrgyz land, and we pin our hopes on our government to help us," he said. If Uzbeks "don't respect the government, then we'll just have to shoot them all," he said. source