Putin said: “Mr Karimov and I exchanged views on the main regional and international issues. Our countries have the same or close views in many respects, and this helps us to successfully defend our common interests in the United Nations and develop constructive cooperation within the CIS, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and other international organisations”.

“We discussed in detail the situation in Central Asia of course, and spoke about the issues related to the withdrawal of international coalition forces from Afghanistan in 2014,” Russian President said.

“We agreed to keep monitoring this issue closely and coordinate possible future joint steps, in particular the possibility of providing any needed assistance to Afghanistan’s leadership to help stabilise the military and political situation and fight drug trafficking, terrorism and extremism,” Putin noted.

“We will continue our close cooperation with Tashkent in all different areas. We place priority importance on these ties”, he added.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov said: “I think, today there is no need to convince anybody that growing scale of globalization, fast changing situation in the world around us, growing tension, competition and confrontation in the world, terrorism and extremism, no doubt, show themselves in Central Asia”.

Islam Karimov said: “The upcoming withdrawal of peacekeepers from Afghanistan after 2014 (the process has essentially already begun) could lead in my opinion to negative developments in the region. We cannot deny these problems. The facts speak for themselves”.

“In this context the talks with the President of Russia were very substantive and gave us the chance to critically assess the state of our bilateral cooperation, its prospects and real possibilities, and also the real state of affairs in the region at this time when the situation is changing very fast. These talks are very important indeed for us,” he said.

“I am happy to see that our assessments and views on almost all of the issues we examined are very similar on the whole. Our common interests and cooperation for the benefit of our peoples knit thousands of invisible threads between us, bringing us closer together, and this something that no one can deny,” he said.

“Russia has an indisputably important part to play in resolving today’s big issues: preserving the global strategic balance; non-proliferation of nuclear weapons; energy security; and combating terrorism, extremism, drug trafficking and other threats. We firmly believe that Russia’s presence in Central Asia is an important factor in cementing peace and stability and preventing the creeping (I choose this word in reference to the broad sense and content this issue involves) expansion of extremism and radicalism in the region, and not in our region alone. Radicalism is growing all around the world,” Uzbek leader noted.