Uzbek First Daughter Escalates Family Feud with Poison Claim

The eldest daughter of Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov on Friday suggested she had been poisoned and accused a top official of plotting against her, after the reclusive Central Asian state took steps to curb her media empire.

Gulnara Karimova, 41, a fashion designer and pop singer who is believed to have wielded significant power until recently, took to Twitter to hint that a top official was plotting to succeed her father.

"If the first person in the special services does not rejoice but is afraid of (my) popularity among the people, then he has his own personal ambitions and plans," she wrote.

The comment was interpreted as referring to Rustam Inoyatov, the long-serving chief of the Uzbek national security service.

Asked if 69-year-old Inoyatov would like the presidential job, Karimova said simply: "He would."

"He's already fighting! Can't you see from outside?" she added.

She also claimed to have been poisoned.

"Already (they) tried to poison me, heavy metals like mercury," she tweeted.

"By the will of God, I have not been brought down, although I am still getting treatment," she wrote.

Karimova's Twitter account, which has more than 41,000 followers, is closely watched as one of the few windows into the country's elite, although she writes mainly in a veiled, cryptic style.

This week Karimova turned to Twitter to confirm that the government had closed down three television channels and three radio stations believed to belong to her over alleged violations, stoking speculation of a rift in the ruling family.

The entertainment channels went off the air simultaneously on October 21.

She called the violations cited by the Uzbek Agency for Press and Information "a ludicrous list of the names of laws".

She also said her Terra financial group faced tax evasion charges that she dubbed "made up out of thin air."

Karimova runs jewelry and cosmetics businesses and several charity foundations. Until recently she was Uzbekistan's permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva and its ambassador to Spain.

Karimova was often seen as a potential successor to her strongman father, who has ruled the Central Asian country for its entire post-Soviet history and has been slammed by Western activists over alleged rights violations.

Karimova wrote on Twitter that her father is "fine and healthy" but added that some surrounding him wished otherwise.