The 56 members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe attended the OSCE summit that was held in Astana, Kazakhstan on December 1-2. While almost all the states were represented by their presidents, Uzbekistan’s president did not attend the summit and sent the Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Norov instead. In addition, on December 2, U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton visited Tashkent as a part of her Central Asian tour, during which she also attended the OSCE summit in Astana. During both events, Uzbek representatives had an opportunity to voice the country’s positions and opinions on some of the most important issues.

During the first day in Astana, Vladimir Norov identified Uzbekistan’s position on one of the most discussed issues of the summit – the stabilization of the situation in Afghanistan. The minister stated that Uzbekistan does not consider taking part in projects in Afghanistan on a collective basis, but prefers to do so bilaterally. “The fact that there is no military solution to the Afghan problem, and that the strategy chosen by the coalition forces for conciliation in Afghanistan does not bring the expected results becomes more evident”, Norov said. He emphasized that, as before, only non-military goods will be transferred to Afghanistan through Uzbekistan. He also recalled the 6+3 initiative proposed earlier by President Karimov, the essence of which lies in the resolution of the Afghan issue by the Afghan people with assistance from countries that are interested ending the war and providing a stable future for Afghanistan in accordance with their own security interests. In addition, Norov proudly stated that Uzbekistan provides energy for Afghanistan’s capital and its neighborhood, and has built a number of social and infrastructure facilities.

Another issue highlighted by the Uzbek representative in Astana was the ethnic conflict in southern Kyrgyzstan, where Uzbek minorities were recently subjected to pogroms and violence. Specifically, Norov said that “It should be admitted that, unfortunately, the OSCE and its structures practically played no positive role in prevention or neutralization of the bloody events…”. Thus, Norov stated that an important objective for the OSCE is to elaborate rules and mechanisms for protecting the interests of national minorities.  Before this, however, the minister underlined the necessity of an international independent investigation of the violence. Not hiding his skepticism about the international investigative committee initiated by the north-European states, he noted that this group has authority neither under the UN, nor under the OSCE. Thus, it is unclear who will be considering the findings of the group and on what level.

U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton identified three priority issues at the summit: increasing the support from the OSCE member-states for the war in Afghanistan; increasing the role of the OSCE in conflicts similar to the one that took place in Georgia in 2008; and commitments from the member-states regarding human rights and fundamental freedoms. Clinton stated that she plans to raise the issue of imprisoned human rights defenders “on the highest ranking levels” during her visit to Tashkent.

During her visit to Uzbekistan on December 2, Clinton met with President Karimov. They discussed bilateral cooperation perspectives, regional security issues including combating international terrorism and drug trafficking. Finally, the U.S. State Secretary appealed to Karimov to pay more attention to the protection of human rights in Uzbekistan. She noted, however, that no country has a monopoly in this sphere, and underlined that whenever the U.S. authorities criticize Uzbekistan for the lack of press freedom and freedom of conscience in the country, cases of torture and exploitation of child labor, they do it only “out of mutual respect”.

The U.S. State Department reports that during her visit, Clinton and Uzbekistan’s first vice-premier Rustam Azimov signed an intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in the science and technology sphere, which expands the opportunities for academic and research institutions for scientific and technical collaboration. In the second half of the day, Clinton met with civil society representatives at the U.S. Embassy. However, the planned briefing for Uzbek and foreign mass media representatives was cancelled.

These two events provided Uzbekistan’s authorities an opportunity to re-state Uzbekistan’s position on some issues of major regional and international importance. And even though Karimov did not personally attend the OSCE summit in Astana, experts think that he was carefully preparing for it. For instance, local observer Sergey Ezhkov interprets the recent proposal of the Uzbek president to the Parliament for further democratic reforms and strengthening the civil society as “a preventive political maneuver”, which aimed to lower the degree of criticism of Uzbekistan at the OSCE summit. However, the fact remains that neither the summit nor the visit of the high-ranking U.S. official were able to bring about major changes in Uzbekistan’s foreign policy.