Article continues Comments from Washington have been less satisfactory, with US spokesmen maintaining a careful balance between the forces of law and order and the opposition, calling on both sides to exercise "restraint". Not for the first time, it is is hard to avoid the impression that double standards are being applied: while George Bush promotes the cause of freedom in Iraq, Ukraine and Lebanon, but he merely pays lip service to it in Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Palestine. If freedom means Islamists taking power, then "outposts of tyranny" can remain undisturbed.

Every government, of course, has the right to defend itself against violent enemies, and there is no doubt that Uzbekistan faces some dangerous ones, including the al-Qaida-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, responsible for past attacks. Friday's violence apparently began when armed insurgents stormed the prison in Andijan, freed inmates, including 23 businessmen accused of religious extremism - falsely, supporters insist - and took policemen hostage.

Yet there is worrying evidence that the entire Uzbek opposition is being tarred unjustly and misleadingly with the brush of militant fundamentalism, when the real issue is a volatile combination of poverty and mass unemployment as market reforms have progressed - while the media is strictly controlled by authorities who are notoriously quick to resort to intimidation and brutality. Experts have long warned of the danger that Muslim radicals, convinced that the west is blindly backing a corrupt and unrepresentative government, could help trigger wider disturbances. That is exactly what seems to have happened.

Part of the problem is that Islam Karimov, an unsavoury combination of old-style Communist apparatchik and Uzbek nationalist, has some powerful friends. Vladimir Putin, alarmed by the fall of pro-Russian regimes in the old Soviet "near abroad" - Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan - has backed him for fear of further change that could affect Chechnya; Russia blamed the "Taliban" for the Andijan attack. Mr Bush appreciates the strategic value of the Khanabad airbase, while the CIA has gathered intelligence from prisoners tortured in Uzbekistan. Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Tashkent, resigned last year in protest that the UK was using this sort of information.

Uzbekistan's killings should be investigated impartially and the perpetrators brought to justice. But harsh words that will quickly be forgotten are not enough. The US should use its immense power more wisely to get the balance right between geopolitics and democracy. It and other western countries, including Britain and its EU partners, must do more to help the emergence of a legitimate democratic opposition - so that people power in central Asia ends up wielded by the right sort of people.