Several hundred soldiers and riot police stood by as the protesters blocked the road leading to a bridge to the Kyrgyz side of the town, over the Sharikh Khansai canal.peThe protesters tried to get traders crossing the bridge to join them, one young man smashing the window of a car that was trying to get to the bridge, witnesses said.

They held placards proclaiming the innocence of the Islamist leader, a cattle farmer called Bakhtiyor Rakhimov, and the wrestler, Dilmorod Mamajanov.

"We don't want anything but the freedom of these two - we have no other demands," said one of Rakhimov's relatives, named Anakhan.

"They are suffering for you so you can cross, why don't you stand here with us?" another woman shouted at a passerby.

Rakhimov and Mamajanov were among several people arrested two days earlier when Uzbek troops reclaimed the town from protesters who had chased them out last weekend, following clashes in the eastern city of Andijan.

Hundreds of people are feared to have been killed in the bloodshed which began in Andijan on May 13, sparking calls, including from the United States, for President Islam Karimov to allow an independent investigation.

The situation eased around midday as Uzbek forces allowed traders to cross the bridge, one of two destroyed by Uzbekistan in recent years in a clampdown on trade with Kyrgyzstan.

The mayor of a neighbouring town helping negotiate with the protesters said compromise was being sought.

"It's better to look for compromise and find a peaceful solution to the problems put forward by these protesters," said the mayor, Manzura Egamova.

But residents crossing to Kyrgyzstan said they feared Uzbek authorities were using harsh methods to deal with those blamed for the recent days' unrest.

Overnight Kyrgyz border guards intercepted a crowd of some 500 residents of the Uzbek side who tried to cross the river, shouting that they wanted refugee status, a spokeswoman for Kyrgyzstan's border service said.

"They were shouting that they were afraid of Karimov's investigations," the spokeswoman told AFP.

"There are many rumours of arrests - people are complaining, they are fed up," a local farmer said.

"We want more money and more work, but the authorities send us more soldiers and more police."

Western officials, led by the United Nations and the European Union, have stepped up the pressure on Uzbekistan's hardline regime for a thorough inquiry into the Andijan events.

Yesterday US Secretary of State Secretary Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed US calls for a transparent, international inquiry, warning Tashkent, a US ally in the war on terror, could face international isolation should it fail to comply.

The Western-led Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) also called for an inquiry and said that Uzbekistan was not responding to OSCE efforts to mediate.

Uzbek authorities have refused to say whether they will let foreign experts look into the Andijan events, while criticising foreign media coverage as likely to inflame the situation.

Tashkent has said 169 people died in Andijan when it deployed military force in response to violence by armed Islamic extremists seeking to overthrow the government and establish an Islamic state in Central Asia.