Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday signed agreements worth $15 billion in key sectors, including the exploitation of oil, gas, and uranium fields in the Central Asian state.
Uzbekistan
President Islam Karimov and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday signed
agreements worth $15 billion in key sectors, including the exploitation of oil,
gas, and uranium fields in the Central Asian state.
In the latest stop on Xi's tour of
Central Asia
,
President Karimov praised his energy-rich country's growing ties with
China
,
which he described as the locomotive of the world economy.
"For all the years of our independent development,
China
has
never linked the provision and expansion of multifaceted bilateral cooperation
with any political or other conditions," Karimov told reporters.
This appeared a veiled reference to
Tashkent
's
sometimes awkward relations with the West over human rights concerns.
Xi is on a closely watched four-nation tour of
Central
Asia
that has already seen him sign major energy deals in
Turkmenistan
and
Kazakhstan
. He
is later due to travel to
Kyrgyzstan
.
China
over
the last years has been ramping up its influence in a region that was once
Moscow
's
playground, seeking new sources of energy for its fast-growing economy.
The two sides also inked a document to make changes to an Uzbekistan-China gas
pipeline agreement signed a few years ago.
The changes were due to the planned construction of a fourth branch of the
Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline that runs through
Uzbekistan
and
Kazakhstan
.
Since 2002
China
has
invested more than $6 billion in the Uzbek economy, and the volume of bilateral
trade reached $3.4 billion last year, according to the Uzbek president.
"One of our priorities is to increase the trade turnover between our
countries to $5 billion by 2017," Xi said.
The Chinese president will also visit the ancient
Silk
Road
town of
Samarkand
,
where a Confucius Institute--
China
's
equivalent to British Councils or Goethe Institutes--is expected to open.
"I have long dreamt of visiting ancient
Samarkand
...and
it is a great honor for me that President Karimov is accompanying me to his
hometown," Xi said.
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