APRIL 5 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — On his first trip to Moscow as Uzbekistan’s president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed investment pledges worth $12b and trade deals worth $3.8b with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The main thrust of the deals was in gas. Mr Mirziyoyev said that Russia had agreed to increase the amount of gas it buys from Uzbekistan, a vital revenue earner for the Uzbek economy.

“The case in point is significant expansion of deliveries of natural gas to Russia on the basis of the five-year contract to be concluded for the first time,” the TASS news agency quoted Mr Mirziyoyev as saying.

The deals bode well for Mr Mirziyoyev who cuts a very different figure on the international scene than his predecessor, Islam Karimov, who died in September after ruling for 25 years. Where Karimov was cagey, aloof and unilateral, Mr Mirziyoyev has shown that he is able to charm regional heads of states and get bilateral deals signed.

Mr Putin, who always had a difficult working relationship with Mr Karimov, appeared happy to see Uzbek-Russian relations blossom.

“We are witnessing our trade and economic ties intensifying, and we have always paid special attention to it,” he was quoted as saying. “It should be noted that in general we keep the trade turnover at a high level. In some positions it grows in a remarkable manner.”

The meeting in Moscow, though, came just two days after an alleged suicide bomber from Central Asia killed at least 14 people on a metro in St Petersburg. Security, cracking down on terrorist recruitment drives in Central Asia and stopping the spread north of the Taliban from Afghanistan, was also high on the agenda.

ENDS