By Shamil Baigin

TASHKENT, Aug 20 - Uzbekistan has   decided not to seek the death sentence for 15 suspected militants accused of  involvement in a series of bombings and shoot-outs earlier this year that  killed 47 people, prosecutors said on Friday.

      The 13 men and two women standing trial for links to the violence in the   capital Tashkent and ancient city of Bukhara in March and April should be   imprisoned for sentences between nine and 20 years, prosecutors said in a

  submission to the judge.

      The explosions and fighting shattered five years of apparent stability   in Central Asia's most populous state. President Islam Karimov has jailed  thousands of dissident Muslims and said his state is under threat from  Islamists similar to the Taliban.

      "Taking into consideration that those who carried out and organised the  terrorist acts were either destroyed or killed, that the accused confessed  their guilt and that their active cooperation helped prevent worse terrorist  acts, we do not seek the ultimate punishment," said prosecutor Murad Salikhov.

      The 15 accused, sitting in a large cage, looked downcast as Salikhov  spoke. They later wept as each took their turn to tell the court they  accepted their guilt on terrorism and other charges. One male defendant  asked to be sentenced to death.

      Five of the defendants have testified that they received training from  Arab instructors -- who they said had also trained al Qaeda fighters -- in  Pakistan's South Waziristan region. One claimed a wanted member of  their group had contact with Osama bin Laden.

      Human rights groups have in the past accused Uzbekistan's police of  extracting confessions under torture.

      The bombs and shoot-outs in March and April killed 33 militants,  including six suicide bombers, and 14 others, mostly police, according to  official accounts of the violence.

      The trial was interrupted last month by a further three suicide bombers  who targeted the U.S. and Israeli embassies and the prosecutor's office,  killing a further four people.

      Uzbekistan is a close ally of the United States in its war on terror and  has given Washington the use of a military airbase near the border with  Afghanistan.

      All of the defendants have pleaded guilty to various charges including  terrorism.

       Ikbol Tashpulatova, 32, one of two women in the dock, pleaded guilty to a charge of failing to inform the police that  her husband was a bomb-maker but denied a charge that said she had sought to set up a female extremist cell in Bukhara.