Abu Nasyr Niyazmatov, head of the newspaper Yedinaya Rossiya's Central Asian office
Russia and Uzbekistan have agreed to build a new gas pipeline and develop joint space programmmes.
Last week, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin paid a two-day working visit to Tashkent. His talks with the Uzbek leadership produced important intergovernmental documents on the expansion of bilateral trade and economic cooperation.
President Islam Karimov met Vladimir Putin at the airport upon his arrival in Tashkent on September 1. He violated protocol to emphasize that Russia has been and remains Uzbekistan's priority partner, and that Putin's visit to Tashkent offers a great opportunity to exchange opinions on major questions of bilateral cooperation and strategic coordination in settling acute international problems.
During his meeting with Karimov, Putin emphasized that in the last seven years trade between Russia and Uzbekistan has increased 10 times over to reach $3 billion. In some estimates, the figure is $4 billion. The two countries are consistently developing cooperation in key areas, such as aerospace, machine-building, transportation, telecommunications, health care, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, energy and electrical engineering.
The two leaders decided to start joint construction of a gas pipeline in Uzbekistan. Commenting on this decision, Karimov said, in particular: "It is rumoured that Uzbekistan is against the pipe being laid on its territory. Today, I make it very clear that this is not true. We are primarily interested in it on commercial grounds, and because of our allied commitments to Russia."
On the whole, Russian Prime Minister and Uzbek President highly appraised the prospects of long-term cooperation in the sphere of mineral and raw materials' resources, primarily gas, and discussed the expansion of military and technical contacts.
The intergovernmental space programme for the study of Earth and space for peaceful purposes, which was signed in Tashkent, will become a landmark in the history of bilateral cooperation. It provides for the maintenance and development of space infrastructure on Uzbek territory - the Suffa Radio-Astronomical Observatory, the Maidanak Astronomical Observatory, and the Maidanak Measuring Complex.
The programme envisions the building and deployment of infrastructure for the reception, procession and use of satellite-based systems of navigation, global monitoring, mapmaking and communications. This capability will help Uzbekistan monitor and administer agriculture and transportation, produce modern electronic chips, improve town planning, find mineral deposits, and receive warnings about natural disasters. Next year, Uzbekistan will start building a centre for the remote probing of the Earth under this programme.
The programme will be completed in 2013, and subsequently it may become a foundation for space cooperation with other CIS countries. They could use it for resolving a strategic task - the formation of CIS common navigation and information space.
Putin's visit produced one more important result: A plan of action for the programme of economic cooperation between the Russian and Uzbek governments for 2008-2012. Its implementation should help the two countries reveal their economic potential, and consolidate their integration and cooperation. Assessing our bilateral relations, Putin said: "They are strategic not only on paper, but in reality. This applies to our coordinated political agenda, and to economic issues."