Yii is handling $_GET for clean url only

Question

i am trying to allow accessing the $_GET for both clean url and normal get request in YII (Yii 1.1.14), so for example if i have a controller Cities and action getCities that var_dump($_GET) only

1- http://example.com/cities/getCities/country_id/100
==> the output is array(1) { ["country_id"]=> string(3) "100" }
2- http://example.com/cities/getCities?country_id=100
==> the output is array(0) { }

my urlManager is

'urlManager' => array(
    'class'     => 'ext.localeurls.LocaleUrlManager',
    'languageParam'    => 'lang', //  Name of the parameter that contains the desired language when constructing a URL
    'urlFormat'       => 'path',
    'showScriptName'  => false,
    'caseSensitive'   => false,
    'rules'=>array(
        'login'=>'/home/login'
    )
),

how could i allow Yii to recognize $_GET in both cases above?

EDIT i am using nginx 1.6. GET params (?x=y) is working fine on other Yii projects, only this project doesn't. I changed the web-server to apache, and i got it working on this project!!! although this project has the same nginx configurations like others!!