Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko announced this today at a meeting with Foreign Minister of Uzbekistan Bakhtiyor Saidov, BELTA reports.

The President of Belarus first of all thanked Bakhtiyor Saidov for the hospitality that was provided by the Uzbek side during the recent official visit of the President of Belarus to Tashkent, and also conveyed his best wishes and gratitude to the Uzbek leader Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

“We then set ambitious plans for ourselves - to achieve a trade turnover of a billion dollars. I think that we don’t have time to retreat anywhere, and we don’t need to. We are ready to play our role, I hope that Uzbekistan will also make every effort,” said Alexander Lukashenko.

The President also expressed gratitude to Uzbekistan for supporting Belarus on its path to membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

“I ask you to pay special attention to the creation of joint ventures that we agreed on. We talked then about BELAZ and so on. Let’s work substantively in this direction. We are interested in this. We have something to offer Uzbekistan. I think that, being here in Belarus, if you want to see some of our enterprises, please, we will organize a visit to any enterprise at any time so that we can make sure that its products are acceptable for use in Uzbekistan,” the head of Belarus suggested.

Alexander Lukashenko emphasized that Belarus has always been friendly and brotherly towards Uzbekistan and the people of this country. “You can rest assured that it will always be like this. I often say that we are very similar in our hard work, patriotism and attitude towards our state. Therefore, let’s implement the agreements that we reached then in Tashkent,” the President concluded.