President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov received the First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Sergey Ivanov at Oqsaroy residence in Tashkent on 4 July.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov has said Uzbek-Russian relations have great prospects at the meeting with Russian official.

Islam Karimov said: "Assessing Russian-Uzbek relations, I would formulate them shortly with three phrases. This is mutual understanding, dynamism and great prospects, real prospects which our relations have and which we should aspire to."

Today the Uzbek-Russian relations are developing dynamically in all spheres. In particular, the volume of mutual commodity turnover grew by 42% and exceeded US$3 billion in 2006. The structure of exports and imports has expanded, and their volumes are growing. Last year Russia purchased over 1 million tonnes of agricultural products from Uzbekistan, which is 3 times more compared to 2005.

Karimov said: "The Uzbek-Russian relations are developing intensively, the ties are based on mutual trust and the cooperation has great perspectives. The structure of your delegation also shows the desire of Russia to develop interaction with Uzbekistan. We believe that the negotiations held in Tashkent will be fruitful".

Sergey Ivanov noted that Russia considered Uzbekistan as one of its important partners in Central Asia, and main goal of the visit is consideration of new opportunities of further development of mutually beneficial ties. In particular, he emphasized that the sides had vast potential for further expansion of scientific-practical cooperation in the field of high-tech.