Anadolu Agency
December 21

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who completed his visit to Uzbekistan returned to Turkey on Saturday.

Speaking at Esenboga Airport, Erdogan said that he paid his first visit to Uzbekistan as the prime minister.

Erdogan said that his meetings with Uzbek President Islam Karimov and Parliament Speaker Erkin Halilov were very beneficial.

Noting that they took bilateral relations, regional and international issues particularly security and fight with terrorism in the meetings, Erdogan said that a new period had to start in the bilateral relations and this period had started by his visit.

''We've reached consensus of opinion on the fact that the economic relations didn't fully reflect the potential. The trade volume of 300 million U.S. dollars is not sufficient. We want to reach 1 billion U.S. dollars in trade in 2004. We've determined that both sides had common efforts to further improve our economic cooperation both during my meeting with Uzbek businessmen and also during our meeting with Uzbek Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyaev and Turkish and Uzbek businessmen,'' he said.

Prime Minister Erdogan said that the meeting of Turkish-Uzbek Joint Economic Commission meeting was held at the same time with his visit, and the economic and commercial relations between the two countries were assessed broadly.

Erdogan said they also exchanged views about recent developments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the effects of the developments in the region, adding that ''I stressed the importance Turkey attached to Central Asian region and its relations with Uzbekistan.''

Erdogan remarked that Turkey considered Eurasia as a cooperation geography and that Turkey was ready to cooperate with Central Asian countries to install stability, to share prosperity in that geography.

Reminding the transportation problem between Turkey and Uzbekistan, Erdogan said that he brought this issue onto agenda and Uzbek President Karimov gave the necessary orders about the issue and the Uzbek side accepted the demand of Turkish Airlines to increase the number of its flights to Uzbekistan from four to seven.

''I see that the political halt that was seen in the bilateral relations for five years has come to and end with this visit,'' said Erdogan, reminding that 202 businessmen, bureaucrats, and journalists attended the visit. He was very pleased with the interest shown in them in Uzbekistan, Erdogan said adding that he conveyed the invitation of President Sezer to Uzbek President Karimov and that Karimov would come to Turkey.

Erdogan noted that he invited Uzbek Prime Minister to Turkey.

Upon a question, Erdogan said he would not state clearly what would be the trade volume between the two countries as a result of the meetings, adding that Turkish businessmen took very important steps to increase the volume.

Answering a question asking why the principle of reciprocity which was valid in diplomacy, was not seen in his visit, Erdogan said ''we regard Central Asian countries as brother countries, and that principle is not very valid in brother states. We try to solve the difficulties which were seen in relations to date. Islam Karimov is the head of state, my counterpart is prime minister. Karimov said in our meeting that 'he loved Turkey so much that he came to Turkey very often.' This shows that our relations don't depend on that reciprocity principle.''

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