ssues of regional security and cooperation between Uzbekistan and Russia in the struggle against terrorism and drugs trafficking will be discussed by the Uzbek leadership with Russian Vice-premier Ilya Klebanov, Secretary of the Security Council Sergei Ivanov and Minister for affairs of the CIS Leonid Drachevsky. While in Tashkent, Sergei Ivanov will meet his Uzbek counterpart Mirakbar Rakhmankulov; Ilya Klebanov will hold talks with Uzbek Defence Minister Yuri Agzamov, and Leonid Drachevsky will meet Uzbek First Vice-premier Bakhtiyar Khamidov. On the agenda of the Russian delegation is a visit to the Chkalov Aviation Entreprise in Tashkent which for many years has been actively cooperating with Russian aircraft building enterprises. The visit of the high-ranking Russian guests will be crowned by a reception given by Uzbek President Islam Karimov, Tonight, the Russian guests will take a flight to Moscow.

elegations from the Tajik and Uzbek foreign ministries started talks in Tashkent on 14th March to study a draft agreement on mutual trips by citizens of the two countries, the Uzbek embassy in Tajikistan told the Asia-Plus news agency, quoting the Uzbek Foreign Ministry press service.

The delegations at the talks are headed by the deputy foreign minister, Ghulomjon Mirzoyev, for the Tajik side and his counterpart Abdusamad Haydarov for the Uzbek side. The delegations are expected to work for two days.

As reported by the Uzbek Foreign Ministry, Turkmenistan was the first country in the region with which Uzbekistan introduced a visa regime, from the middle of 1999. Uzbekistan is holding talks with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan on signing similar agreements.

he Uzbek Central Bank's commission for registering commercial banks has granted a private commercial Business Bank a licence to carry out banking activities and included it in the state register of commercial banks. The bank's authorized capital is worth 60m sums. This is a joint-stock bank, with 60 per cent of its capital made up of private individuals' money.

t the personal instruction of Uzbekistan's president, Islam Karimov, humanitarian aid, consisting of 10 tonnes of flour, food supplies and other things, has been delivered to the village of Sofed Bulon located in Ala-Buka District of Dzhalal-Abad Region of [southern] Kyrgyzstan. This generous gift by the leader of the neighbouring republic, which itself is in need of food supplies, was in reply to a letter from peasants, in which they congratulated I. Karimov on his re-election to the post of president. The aid was delivered to its destination by the deputy governor of Namangan Region [eastern Uzbekistan], Ikrom Najmiddinov. Uzbekistan's residents have promised the residents of Ala-Buka District to do what they can to help to restore the Shakh Fazil historical complex located in the neighbourhood of Sofed Bulon.

zbekistan's National Bank for Foreign Economic Activity has been criticized for shortcomings in allocating and monitoring credits, failing to support small and medium business and for not doing enough to attract deposits from the population. According to a report published in the Uzbek newspaper `Narodnoye Slovo' on 11th March, a meeting of the bank board called to examine the bank's performance in 1999 set out as the bank's priorities in 2000 the need to encourage the population to deposit their spare funds in the bank, devise effective schemes to support small and medium business, set in train measures to privatize the bank, introduce new banking technology and move towards a customer-oriented style of operation. The following are excerpts from the report:

An extended-format meeting of the board of the National Bank for Foreign Economic Activity of the Republic of Uzbekistan has been held. The board meeting discussed the bank's performance in 1999 and the tasks following from the speeches by Uzbek president Islam Karimov at the first session of the Supreme Assembly of the second convocation and at the meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers devoted to summing up the results of the country's social and economic development in 1999 and the priority trends of liberalization and deepening of economic reforms in 2000.

The acting chairman of the board, Z. Mirkhojayev, delivered a report on this issue. The bank's capital in 1999 was 73.5bn soms. The credit portfolio in 1999 reached 285 soms, up 47 per cent on 1998. The bank serviced 98 international credits worth 1.9bn dollars. In line with the government's decisions on supporting small and medium business, the bank assimilated credit lines from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Asian Development Bank, the IMF and the International Finance Corporation and by the end of 1999 had approved projects worth 180m dollars.

The National Bank for Foreign Economic Activity of the Republic of Uzbekistan plays an active role on the country's stock exchange. The bank's investment portfolio comprises shares in enterprises of the aircraft, textile and food industries and the construction, agribusiness, transport, tourism and finance sectors. The bank's investments into the share capital of 33 enterprises were 3.9bn soms and 13m dollars.

However, the meeting stressed that there were serious shortcomings in some aspects of the bank's work. Substantial criticisms were made of the way work with credits is organized in the bank, the speed at which credit lines are assimilated, the standard of project management, the monitoring of credits and the ways used to encourage citizens to deposit spare funds. The fact that the bank's commercial activity is developing faster than the process of consolidating it as an institution is having a negative impact on the bank's development.

Not enough work is being carried out in the country's Regions to support small and medium business. Amongst the central staff and in a number of Regional and District subdivisions of the bank, the way work is organized, staff qualifications and the way clients are handled do not meet the demands which the country's leadership has placed upon the banking system.

A number of heads of subdivisions, departments and branches of the bank who failed to implement the tasks set up for the year on the most important work priorities were strictly criticized. Some of them have been dismissed from their posts. Specific measures to increase the productivity and profitability of the work of the entire bank system were outlined at the session.

After a critical analysis of the bank's performance in 1999 in the light of the tasks set by the Uzbek president, Islam Karimov, at the first session of the Supreme Assembly of the second convocation and at a meeting of the country's Cabinet of Ministers, the bank board set priority tasks for 2000, which are as follows:

1. Work is to be stepped up to encourage the country's population to deposit spare funds and new and attractive kinds of deposits and investment deposits are to be devised and put into effect.

2. The interbank money market of credit resources is to be developed and the effectiveness of financial resources enhanced.

3. Every assistance is to be given to small and medium business and effective schemes for allocating microcredits in the national and foreign currencies are to be devised and introduced into practice, on the model of the work being done in Tashkent Region and in other Regions of the country.

4. Investment activity is to be improved and financing of the regional economic sector increased, by, amongst other methods, expanding leasing operations and stepping up work on the country's share market.

5. Measures to privatize the National Bank for Foreign Economic Activity of the Republic of Uzbekistan are to be implemented, and strategic investors are to be attracted who are capable of considerably increasing the flow of foreign investments into the country's economy.

6. Banking technologies are to be further improved and a pilot project for online banking introduced. Work on using the bank's plastic cards in the national currency is to be expanded. The use of automatic banking machines and payment terminals at trade and service stations in all the Regions of the country is to be considerably increased.

7. The organizational structure of the bank is to be developed to meet the conditions applicable in Uzbekistan's liberalized economy. Work is to be reoriented from primarily servicing the existing financial flows towards creating effective partnership relations with clients.

Finance Minister Rustam Azimov attended and addressed the meeting of the board of the National Bank for Foreign Economic Activity of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

zbekistan Airways national air company will start flights to the Indian city of Amritsar and to the second biggest city in Britain, Birmingham, beginning from April 2000. An advertisment in `Ozbekiston Ovozi' on 14th March said that the Boeing's twice-weekly flights from Tashkent to Amritsar will be on Thursdays and Sundays, and to Birmingham on Thursdays and Fridays.

rofessional fighter from Uzbekistan Artur Grigorian won his eleventh consecutive WBO title. In Berlin he knocked-out Italian champion Sandro Kazomonika in the ninth round.

n Uzbek delegation, led by the Uzbek minister for foreign economic relations Elyor Ghaniyev, has been to Brussels for the first session of a cooperation committee set up by Uzbekistan and the European Union. It was pointed out that despite world economic crises, which caused a fall in world raw materials prices, there had been no substantial change in the dynamics of trade between Uzbekistan and the EU. In 1999 the trade turnover between Uzbekistan and EU countries was worth 1.4b dollars.

The Uzbek delegation told the session about the government's plans to liberalize the currency market - to introduce convertibility for current currency transactions and to introduce a single national currency [the sum] exchange rate, - to deepen the process of privatization and improve the banking system. The European officials said they would support the Uzbek government's steps to ensure external convertibility of the sum that would increase the flow of foreign investments in the Uzbek economy and help the country join the WTO. In this context, it was noted with satisfaction that Uzbekistan was consistently developing cooperation with international financial organizations.

ussian air force Commander-in-Chief Anatoliy Kornukov arrived in Uzbekistan on Thursday [9th March] evening to discuss military-technical cooperation and coordinated efforts of the Russian and Uzbek air defence systems. He met chiefs of the Uzbek Defence Ministry and was received by President Islam Karimov. Kornukov's visit excluded any contacts with correspondents. However, a source told ITAR-TASS that the two countries might have a joint air force drill in summer. The Russian general visited the CIS largest aircraft-building enterprise, the Tashkent aviation plant named after Valeriy Chkalov. He displayed a special interest in the Il-76M military transport plane manufactured by the enterprise, the source said. After a visit to Uzbekistan, Kornukov has departed for Tajikistan. He will return to Moscow from Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, the last leg of his Central Asian tour.

n 1st March, the traffic police on the Nukus-Muynak route in Kanlykul District stopped two Zil lorries and drivers from Khorezm Region. The police confiscated over 11 t of nonferrous metal worth almost 385,000 soms. The drivers were planning to export them illegally. The same day the police found over 2 t of copper and 200 kg of bronze worth more than 141,000 soms in the luggage section of a Mercedes Benz bus which was going in the Nukus-Tashkent direction.

he republican prosecutor's office held a big meeting. The main topic on the agenda was summing up the results of work carried out in the previous year and the tasks for the current year. In particular, the enforcement of laws and government resolutions aimed at the development of the social sector has been unsatisfactory. There are cases when the money allocated for poor families does not reach the recipient. For example, families which have children under 16 did not receive 68.5 soms of money allocated for them last year.

There are cases of breaches of the law in developing small and medium-sized business, in attracting foreign investment into the country's economy. Fulfilling contractual obligations is also at a low level as a result of which goods worth 6.8bn soms have not been sold and still remain in warehouses. As regards the crime rate, it turned out that last year it went up by 9.4 per cent in the country. The number of crimes solved remains low. Unfortunately, there have been cases when criminal proceedings have been instituted against innocent people.

regular meeting on contract relations was held at the Ministry of Justice. This time the meeting discussed issues of concluding contracts at enterprises of the agroindustrial complex and about violations in this work. According to statistical reports, 5,600 enterprises of the complex concluded 390,000 contracts last year, 13,175 of which were found to be illegal and 7,000 of them were re-registered. In the majority of cases they were concluded illiterately from the judicial point of view, in particular without pointing out the terms of fulfilling the obligations.