By Maria Golovnina
ALMATY (Reuters) - A rare Central Asia summit on how to share scarce water resources broke down in bitter disagreement on Tuesday after the region's five leaders failed to find any common ground in one of the world's driest regions.
Water sharing is a contentious issue in Central Asia, an arid, mainly Muslim region where water-thirsty crops like cotton are the main livelihood for most of its 58 million people.
Bickering over water has intensified in recent years as severe weather fluctuations -- from record cold winters to devastating floods and droughts -- cause additional friction.
Seen as a source of instability, the dispute has worried the West which sees Central Asia as part of its alternative supply route for U.S. and NATO troops fighting in nearby Afghanistan.
The one-day summit in Kazakhstan was officially designed to discuss the disappearing Aral Sea but was seen as a chance to openly discuss cross-border water sharing.
The main stumbling block, however, was the agenda of the summit itself as the presidents of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan sat down for talks.
On one side were Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, two poorer nations abundant in hydro resources who sought to use the meeting to raise national grievances over water use.
The other camp, represented by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the region's biggest economies and key water consumers, sought to restrict all talks to the safer subject of the Aral Sea.
"Let me tell you about the problems that concern Kyrgyzstan the most, the problems that should be at the heart of activities of this (summit)," said Kyrgyzstan's leader, Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
"Over the last 16 years this has been the only venue uniting all Central Asia countries to discuss not only ecological but also water and energy related problems. We need ... appropriate measures to solve this critical situation (over water use)."
Bakiyev's address, which focussed on Kyrgyz concerns such as energy shortages and the need to construct new power stations, triggered an angry reaction from Uzbek President Islam Karimov.
"We agreed that during this summit we would discuss issues only concerning the Aral Sea," Karimov said. "There is no point creating a whole discussion about it (water sharing) ... here."
The region's most populous country, Uzbekistan is worried that the upstream states like Kyrgyzstan will gain political leverage by regulating water flows through new hydro plants.
During the meeting, which was open to reporters, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev sided with Karimov while the Turkmen leader showed a more neutral position. The previous such "Aral Sea" water summit took place in 2002.
WATER VS STABILITY
In Soviet times, water distribution was regulated by Moscow planners who ran an elaborate cross-border system of barter exchange to swap water for commodities like electric power -- an arrangement that fell apart along with the Soviet Union.
Central Asian leaders themselves know how much stability in their ethnically diverse region depends on the availability of water. But no agreement appears to be in sight.
The most emphatic symbol of the problem is the Aral Sea -- once the world's fourth largest lake -- which has shrunk by 70 percent as Moscow planners siphoned off water for cotton irrigation projects in Uzbekistan.
Russia, which wants to play a role in regional water resources, was not invited to the meeting.
While strongly disagreeing with each other's positions, the five Central Asia leaders did end their meeting with a pledge to find ways to unifying their positions in the future.
"Third countries are pursuing their own goals. We must think about efforts to come to agreement ourselves," Karimov said.
(Editing by Richard Hubbard)
