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Uzbekistan Says Pompeo Recognizes Country's 'Significant Progress'

By RFE/RL's Uzbek Service February 03, 2020

TASHKENT -- U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has kicked off the last day of his trip to Eastern Europe and Central Asia by reaffirming Washington's commitment to developing further bilateral ties with Uzbekistan.

Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov said after talks with Pompeo on February 3 in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, that his country will continue to coordinate its activities regarding the situation in neighboring Afghanistan, as well as looking to grow ties in other areas.

"Washington has recognized Uzbekistan's significant progress reached in the last year in terms of religious freedom, eradication of forced and child labor, human rights, as well as creation of condition to secure freedom of speech," Kamilov said.

Pompeo is scheduled to hold talks with the Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev later in the day and to take part in the "C5+1" meeting with his counterparts from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

"We'll talk about security matters for sure, we'll talk about economic integration amongst those countries, and we'll talk about how each of these nations can transform their own countries" in terms of political freedoms, economic conditions, and human rights, Pompeo said earlier in the trip.

Mirziyoev, a former prime minister, became president after predecessor Islam Karimov's death was announced in September 2016. Karimov had ruled Central Asia's most populous country with an iron fist since before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Mirziyoev has taken steps to bolster the country's struggling economy and to implement reforms in Uzbekistan -- where rights abuses had been widespread under Karimov.

Still, rights watchdogs have expressed concerns about conditions in Uzbekistan. Freedom House, for instance, ranked Uzbekistan "not free" in its Freedom On The Net 2018 assessment and said the Internet environment there remained "repressive."

Uzbekistan also has sizable oil and gas reserves, and it has been seen as a counterweight to Russian and Chinese influence in the region. It has allied with Washington in the war in Afghanistan and the fight against radical Islamist fighters.

Pompeo arrived from Kazakhstan, where he met with President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev and his predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbaev. He also met with Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka in Minsk on February 1 and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on January 31.

He began his trip in Britain on January 29 and had meetings with Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

With reporting by Dunyo news agency

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/pompeo- arrives-in-uzbekistan-for-final-stop-of- five-nation-tour/30413654.html

Copyright (c) 2020. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.