Tajik gas company executive Shavkat Shoimov said Tuesday that Uzbekistan is threatening to cut off all gas supplies unless Tajikistan pays down millions of dollars in debts.

Tajikistan has been racked for years by political instability, illegal drug trafficking and the growing threat of violence from neighboring Afghanistan. The country sees regular electricity outages.

The two Central Asian countries also have a history of bad relations. Their 1100-kilometer (684-mile) border was partially mined by Uzbekistan as a security measure during the Tajik civil war in the 1990s.