ASHKENT -- Uzbekistan's president has initiated a crackdown on "speculators" as the Central Asian nation launches its first post-Soviet currency.


President Islam Karimov decreed a series of measures to back the value of the bright new "som" banknotes, but money-changers damned the notes as "pieces of paper."


"Until the economy improves, any type of money here will be just the same pieces of paper," said Gairat, who was among hundreds of black-market money changers at an open-air bazaar in Tashkent.


The new som banknotes, adorned with pictures of the architectural splendors of the ancient Silk Road city of Samarkand, officially replace the interim som-coupon currency on July 1. But some people were paid in the new som Tuesday.


Among all the heirs to the ruble across the former Soviet Union, the interim som-coupon was among the least successful as it suffered repeated devaluations. The new som currency is being launched into a plagued economy without support from the International Monetary Fund, or IMF.


Inflation ran at an annualized 1,500 percent in the first four months of 1994. Uzbekistan has a gaping trade deficit and real interest rates are steeply negative.


Karimov, in a bid to counter these negative forces, called Tuesday for patriotism, decreed that the domestic market be filled with goods and ordered police to pounce on speculators.


"Some shady dealers with dirty hands are using the given freedoms for their own ends -- to speculate," the official Narodnoye Slovo newspaper said.


The newspaper said Karimov defined "speculators" as those who bought goods subsidized by the state and sold them for a mark-up on the free market or in other former Soviet republics.


"Everything must be put in order in trade outlets ... using police," the newspaper quoted Karimov as ordering.


The president decreed the establishment of a government commission to ensure that enough goods are sold by farmers and factories to shops throughout the country.


It remained unclear what would happen to hundreds of money changers at Tashkent's bazaars who on Tuesday were buying dollars for about 36,000 som-coupons compared to an official exchange rate of 5,992 som.