US Edition 
BBC newsreader steps down over Kyrgyzstan revolution claims
A BBC newsreader has stepped down after sensational claims from a senior official that he was involved in planning and fomenting a revolution in Kyrgyzstan.
Arslan Koichiev, who presented a news show from the World Service's Bush House headquarters, allegedly travelled to the volatile Central Asian country early last year, and began to agitate to topple Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the country's president.
"Arslan Koichiev worked through the BBC and helped us," Aliasbek Alymkulov, one of the revolutionary leaders, said last month in an interview with Delavoye Kyrgyzstan, a local newspaper.
Mr Koichev and Ulan Momunaliyev, another key member of the alleged plot, had been in extreme danger, he added.
"They were hunted, there were two accidents arranged, and an attempt to pour acid over them. They were nearly killed," Mr Koichiev's alleged political involvement runs counter to the BBC's strict rules on impartiality, and when the claims came to the attention of his superiors, Mr Koichiev left the organisation. He denies the claims.
The resignation followed a sustained campaign run by Vugar Khalilov, a former BBC employee who had run a thriving public relations company in Kyrgyzstan during President Bakiyev's regime.
After Bakiyev fled, Mr Khalilov was arrested and spent six months in a Kyrgyz jail, an ordeal he blamed on Mr Koichiev.
"When I was a witness of the National Security Service of the Kyrgyz Republic, Arslan Koichiev, hiding under a false name, disseminated libellous statements and allegations about me through Radio Free Europe's Kyrgyz Service, and this interview was repeated by BBC Kyrgyz," Mr Khalilov said in a press statement at the start of last month. "After those reports by Kyrgyz Services of the BBC and Radio Free Europe, I was arrested."