Kyrgyz leader warns of risk of further violence

ASTANA (Reuters) - Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva on Monday warned that the risk of further violence in the impoverished Central Asian nation remained.

At least 294 people were killed last month in southern Kyrgyzstan in clashes between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, the worst ethnic violence to grip the region since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

"There may be other outbursts," Otunbayeva told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. "We cannot yet say that everything has calmed down and that we can get down to reconstruction."

Medvedev pledged to provide support for Kyrgyzstan, despite his earlier harsh criticism of last month's constitutional referendum there, staged by Otunbayeva's administration that aims to build Central Asia's first parliamentary democracy.

"You can always rely on the Russian people and the Russian state," he said.

After Kyrgyzstan held the referendum on June 27, Medvedev warned that the mountainous nation could collapse and the vote aimed at establishing parliamentary democracy could allow extremists to take power in the former Soviet republic.

(Reporting by Denis Dyomkin, writing by Alexei Anishchuk; Editing by Dmitry Solovyov)