Nationalists threaten to return to the streets to topple another government unless it expropriates the Centerra’s Kumtor gold mine
The Guardian (UK)
In an impoverished young nation with a habit of overthrowing its rulers, the future now balances on a mountain of gold at the top of the world, where the air is so thin collapsing visitors may be rushed to a pressure chamber for oxygen.
After two revolutions in eight years, nationalists in Kyrgyzstan are threatening to return to the streets to topple another government unless it expropriates the Kumtor gold mine, a treasure they say was sold off too cheaply to foreigners.
Parliament in the remote ex-Soviet central Asian state has set a deadline of 1 June for the government to renegotiate — or repudiate — a deal struck in 2009 with Canadian firm Centerra Gold to operate the mine.