Tajikistan for friendship with Uzbekistan-president Rakhmon.

25/6 Tass 153

DUSHANBE, June 25 (Itar-Tass) -- Tajikistan came out and continues to
come out in favor of strengthening friendship and good-neighborliness with
Uzbekistan, the peoples of which have been living in peace and accord for
centuries. Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon said this at the opening
ceremony of a secondary school providing education in the Uzbek language
in the border Ganchinsky district of the Sogdi region in the north of the
republic. The Tajik leader is staying in the biggest industrial region of
the country on a working visit, during which he participated in the
opening ceremony of a number of industrial, social and cultural
facilities, the press service of the Tajik president reports on Thursday.
Emomali Rakhmon expressed the hope for the further strengthening of
bilateral relations in economic and humanitarian cooperation, pointing to
the fact that "for its part, Tajikistan has been exerting all efforts for
this."
All conditions are created in the secondary school for 1,300 pupils
with a computerized system of education, modern design and a gym-hall to
educate children of this agrarian region of the republic where several
dozens of thousands of families of ethnic Uzbeks are living. About 500,000
US dollars from the state treasury were spent on the construction of the
educational complex.
Uzbekistan is of strategic importance for Tajikistan since it is the
main supplier of natural gas and electric power in winter. Only through
Uzbekistan the country has a "transit exit" to the CIS countries and
Europe.
At the same time, as independent observers note, despite numerous
public statements of the two neighboring countries' leaders on their
adherence to the spirit of friendship of peoples of many centuries,
bilateral relations, especially in the post-Soviet period, developed
"nervously." In 1992, Tashkent unilaterally suspended air communication
with Tajikistan and in 1999, it introduce a visa regime and partially
mined its border referring to a threat of intrusion of armed Islamists
from outside. A new spiral of tension between Tashkent and Dushanbe has
emerged in the last two years after the Tajik authorities' decision to
resume the construction of the powerful Rogun GES which, according to
Uzbekistan's view, upsets the water balance in the region.
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