Political dialogue with Russia to be deepened says Uzbek foreign minister

RIA Novosti April 17 The Moscow meeting between Russian and Uzbek presidents Vladimir Putin and Islam Karimov was deep, productive and concentrated, Uzbek Foreign Minister Sodiq Safoyev said in an interview with RIA-Novosti. "The recent visit by the Uzbek president had been in preparation for quite a long time - since January of this year. It was agreed at the outset that the leaders of the two states would define the state of bilateral cooperation and, most importantly, guidelines for the future. I can say unequivocally: the meeting was unquestionably profound and productive in content and concentrated in form," Safoyev said. "Although it is just eight months since the previous meeting of our presidents in Samarkand, which had very important, even watershed significance, issues had accumulated in this period that had to be evaluated and analysed and prospects needed to be discussed," the Uzbek foreign minister noted. He said the presidents of the two countries had agreed to hold a bilateral meeting in the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Tashkent in June this year. "This meeting will continue the political dialogue between the two heads of state. This circumstance shows not only the intensity of the political dialogue, but also its depth," Sodiq Safoyev said. He noted that the main purpose of Islam Karimov's visit to Moscow had been to "clarify points of mutual interest and determine the mechanism for realizing them". "I think that it has undoubtedly proved possible to do this. The presidents agreed that the political dialogue will be deepened," Safoyev stressed. He said the foreign ministries of the two countries had been instructed to "formulate the prospects for deepening the legal-treaty basis of our bilateral cooperation in order to enshrine in legal-treaty form the strategic nature of the partnership relations between our countries". According to Sodiq Safoyev, "the forthcoming treaty will embrace all the spheres of multilateral and bilateral political cooperation and our contacts in the most important international organizations. This will involve economic cooperation, contacts in the humanitarian sphere, including the information sphere, and in matters to do with meeting the ethnic cultural needs of the Russophone population resident in Uzbekistan and Uzbeks living in Russia, and also issues connected with security and contacts to maintain peace and stability and cooperation between the relevant bodies."