President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr President, friends, colleagues,
Once again, I wish you a warm welcome to Russia’s capital. Thank you for accepting our invitation to come for this official visit and talks. We are very pleased to see you.
There is no question that Uzbekistan has a special place in our country’s policy. It is a country with, I think, more than 30 million people now, and located at the crossroads of many different interests. It borders Afghanistan and our Central Asian neighbours. We are very happy to see that Uzbekistan is demonstrating its stability and confident development.
Our bilateral trade is growing. We work closely together on the international stage and are developing our bilateral relations too. We are pleased to have the opportunity to discuss the most sensitive issues, as we did just before at the talks in narrow format, and to examine with you the opportunities for developing our economic ties and our political and security cooperation.
Once again, I wish you welcome. I welcome all of our colleagues from Uzbekistan. Each of you is doing much to develop the ties between our countries, and I want to thank you for this.
Thank you for your attention.
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