Respected chairman!
Respected heads of state and government!
Ladies and gentlemen!

I think there is no need to prove that today such phenomena as aggressive nationalism and separatism, religious extremism and international terrorism are emerging in the world arena in place of recrudescences of the "cold war". Joining up with one other, they are assuming an increasingly large-scale and aggressive nature.

We can see specific confirmation of all this in the Central Asian and other regions. Today we are coming up against the far-reaching plans of radically-inclined centres for expansion of religious extremism and terrorism and against attempts to divert the states of the region from the path of democratic, law-based and secular development they have unambiguously chosen.

The events in Tajikistan, the recent [February 1999] explosions in Tashkent, the impudent infiltration of bandit formations into the south of sovereign Kyrgyzstan and other well-known cases testify to this.

The bridgehead for accomplishing these plans is Afghanistan, where the civil war that has been waged for the last 20 years has turned the country into a camp and firing range where international terrorists and extremists of all hues train and find refuge, a country where the cultivation and sale of drugs have become the main means of survival.

According to UN data, today Afghanistan produces 75 per cent of the world's output of opium, 90 per cent of which is directly distributed in Europe. It should be obvious to everybody that while the war continues in Afghanistan, the threat to peace and security and the threat to democratic reforms in the neighbouring states of Central Asia will remain, as will the source of international terrorism and its expansion far beyond the bounds of the region.

Therefore, during discussion of the draft Charter on European Security, I think it necessary to draw your attention to the following issues:

1. The OSCE must play a more active role in forming the system of regional security, including throughout Central Asia. At the same time, special attention must be paid to preventing and neutralizing external threats capable of destroying stability and peace in the regions where the OSCE has responsibility.

2. There is no doubt of the need for and extraordinary importance of the special attention the OSCE and its structures pay to constantly improving the human dimension, especially in the newly-independent states which embarked upon the path of democratic renewal comparatively recently. At the same time we think it is necessary, given the main mission of this organization, more precisely to determine the functions of the OSCE as an international body called upon to anticipate and prevent international conflicts, as well as to strengthen its role in the economic and ecological dimension. The US initiative to set up a Civilian Rapid Reaction Corps (REACT) within the framework of the OSCE could help implement these tasks.

3. We deem it appropriate to raise urgently the question of setting up an international centre for combatting terrorism, the main aim of which should be to coordinate work on implementing unconditionally decisions to fight not only the manifestations of terrorism, but first and foremost the sources which finance, support and direct international terrorism.

A few words about the report by the OSCE chairman-in-office for Central Asia which has been drawn up by a special commission headed by ambassador Wilhelm Hoeynck. We support the assessment and proposals contained in the report and which are directed towards integrating the Central Asian states into the institutions and structures of the OSCE in the context of unconditional implementation of the OSCE's blueprint for all-embracing security in all its dimensions.

[passage omitted: Karimov says steps should be taken to draw up and implement economic projects under OSCE aegis]

At the same time, we consider it inappropriate to establish supplementary bureaucratic structures designed only for Central Asia, bearing in mind the fundamental principle of the inseparability of security and our firm adherence to the formation of free democratic and unified OSCE space as proclaimed in the new Charter [on European Security]

[passage omitted to end: Uzbekistan strives towards integration into Europe and confirms its adherence to the values and ideals of the OSCE]

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