SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan, 7 August 2003 — Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov yesterday vowed to step up trade with Russia, especially in natural gas, after acknowledging that post-Soviet trade policies had brought little success. “We suffered from a certain euphoria, not just in Uzbekistan but in other countries of the former Soviet Union, when we turned our attention to distant lands which we thought would fill the vacuum after the fall of the Soviet Union,” he said after meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“But what have we got out of it in the long run? These days we recognize that we have made many mistakes as a result of our euphoria.” Karimov was hosting Putin, in Uzbekistan on a lightning stopover on his way back from Malaysia, in one of the Central Asian state’s most ancient Silk Road cities. The two had earlier toured its stunning mosques, squares and monuments.
Uzbek-Russian relations have been strained in recent years, with Uzbekistan pulling out of various groupings uniting Russia and former Soviet states. After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on US cities, Karimov opened up his country of 25 million to US troops, and Uzbekistan now receives around $500 million a year in aid from the United States as ties with Russia cooled.
But since the end of last year the two sides have been keen to develop trade in natural gas, with Russian gas monopoly Gazprom spearheading a drive by Moscow to boost its presence in Central Asia. Gazprom has signed long-term agreements with all five ex-Soviet Central Asian states, buying up huge volumes of gas and so effectively postponing the need to develop expensive new Arctic gas fields of its own.
Putin emphasized his own commitment to the rise in trade. “We will aim to implement an agreement on strategic cooperation in the gas sphere,” he said. “We aim to promote it extremely energetically and take it to a new level.”
Russia now accounts for 13 percent of Uzbek foreign trade turnover, but the two leaders want this to rise. Putin identified electrical energy, machine building, aviation and agriculture as areas set for growth. He specifically said Russian textile producers should import more Uzbek cotton directly, bypassing trading companies and middlemen. Going into the talks Putin deplored an ongoing slump in trade between the two former Soviet republics, which he described as a cause for “concern,” media reported. Russia’s share in Uzbekistan’s foreign trade has slumped from 25 percent to 16 percent since 1992, totaling just $900 million in 2002.
Separately, a group of Uzbek protesters rallied outside the Russian Embassy in Tashkent for the release of an opposition leader arrested in Moscow on drugs charges. Fifteen supporters of the Berlik (Unity) movement waved placards urging Putin to release exiled opposition leader and publisher Bakhrom Khamroyev who was arrested by Russian intelligence agents last month. Khamroyev was forced to flee Uzbekistan in December 1992 in a government crackdown on Berlik. He later published Kharakat, an opposition paper distributed in the United States in both Uzbek and Russian which is strongly critical of the situation in Uzbekistan.