Diplomat: Belarus-Uzbekistan relations reach a new high

Charge d'Affaires of Uzbekistan to Belarus Rakhmatulla Nazarov emphasized the importance of interregional contacts as he talked to journalists after his meeting with the leadership of the Grodno Oblast Executive Committee, BelTA reports.

“Three regions of Uzbekistan have agreements with Grodno Oblast. The visits that took place in 2018 and 2019 resulted in signing a number of documents, agreements, memorandums between the regions, and this is producing results today. One of the goals behind the embassy's visit to Grodno Oblast is to make sure that all the highest-level agreements are being implemented and to give them a new impetus,” said Rakhmatulla Nazarov.

He added: “Today we have had a very good conversation with Grodno Oblast Governor Vladimir Stepanovich Karanik. He said that the region is interested in cooperation, just like our regions. We hope that in the near future we will see some practical results, visits, agreements, contracts between our regions.”

Rakhmatulla Nazarov noted that Uzbekistan values friendly ties with Belarus. “Relations between our countries have made considerable progress in the last few years thanks to the leadership of our countries who built good personal relations and communicate on many platforms. This includes the recent meeting of our presidents at the CIS summit in Bishkek. I think it will bolster the progress. We see that the visit of the respected Aleksandr Grigorievich Lukashenko to Uzbekistan in 2018 and the return visit of President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Miromonovich Mirziyoyev in 2019 bore fruit,” Rakhmatulla Nazarov noted. “Last year, trade between our countries exceeded $0.5 billion for the first time [in the history of] bilateral relations. For comparison, in 2016 this figure was a little more than $100 million. Thus, our trade skyrocketed five times within such a short period of time,” the diplomat remarked.

“Speaking specifically about interregional cooperation, I would like to mention the same summit in Kyrgyzstan, where Aleksandr Lukashenko said that he would support the holding of the forum of our regions. This is a new mechanism to bring together regions of the CIS states. Our president, the president of the Republic of Belarus and the president of Russia are determined to scale up cooperation across the board, and by doing so they will tap into the potential of the regions,” the diplomat said.

BelTA – News from Belarus