PRESIDENT RECEIVES UK FOREIGN OFFICE MINISTER

President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev received Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom Alan Duncan on 16 December.

The Head of our state, warmly greeting the guest, expressed sincere gratitude to the British government for deep condolences and support of the Uzbek people on the grieving days of the death of First President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov. The tribute of respect to his memory on behalf of the British leadership during a visit of Alan Duncan to Samarkand has been highly acknowledged in Uzbekistan.

Uzbekistan considers Great Britain as a country, playing a substantial role in world politics and economy, and attaches a specific significance to steady continuation of mutually beneficial cooperation in political, economic, investment, cultural-humanitarian and other spheres, consolidating interaction in international arena, including on the issues of regional security.

In his turn, Alan Duncan congratulated Shavkat Mirziyoyev with his confident victory at the presidential elections and underlined that the British side welcomes the reforms agenda, initiated by the President of Uzbekistan and is ready to work with the new leadership of Uzbekistan on strengthening and further enhancing the multifaceted Uzbek-British dialogue.

The parties thoroughly exchanged views on all issues of Uzbek-British interaction during the meeting.

As underlined during the conversation, today expanding cooperation in trade-economic and investment spheres, where there is a significant potential, has acquired even more important significance.

Currently 544 enterprises with British investments are operating in various spheres of the Uzbek economy.

The results of the 23rd session of the Uzbek-British Trade and Industry Council, which took place on 17 November in Tashkent with over 30 British companies in attendance, demonstrate that the mass-scale transformations, occurring in all spheres of life in our country, including the decisions, adopted recently on improving the business climate and increasing the role of private entrepreneurship, draw interest of the leading British companies to a dynamically developing market of Uzbekistan.

The parties have highly assessed the state of cooperation in cultural-humanitarian spheres, in particular, the productive activity of Westminster International University in Tashkent, the Centre of high technologies with participation of the University of Cambridge as well as British Council representative office. The willingness to enhance cooperation in this area has been confirmed, taking into account a growing interest in Uzbekistan to the English language, especially among the youth.

Other issues on Uzbek-British agenda have also been discussed at the meeting.

UzA