The Central Asian state barred the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from visiting its prisons after hundreds of demonstrators were shot dead by government troops at a 2005 peace protest in Andijan.

"We will be able to talk with detainees in private...and have access to all the premises in the places of detention," Yves Giovannoni, the regional head of the ICRC, said in a statement on Thursday.