"How will people live if the level of water in the downstream areas goes down or the environment is damaged? What will happen then? Therefore, our proposal is simple. God bless you, in the construction of a hydroelectric power plant, be it Kambar-Ata [in Kyrgyzstan] or Roghun [in Tajikistan], first of all, please abide by international requirements and UN conventions and conduct an international examination by experts. How will it be built and on what funds? And most important thing is: What will be its consequences after it is built? Will the water level drop or not? Will the environment be damaged or not? If the environment is not damaged and the water level in the downstream areas does not drop, I will repeat once again, it is OK, then Uzbekistan is ready to implement the projects," he said.

Turning to the issue of the global economic crisis, he said the crisis "bypassed" Uzbekistan. "We can see that how many people have been affected by the crisis. From this standpoint, those who are sitting here and listening to me should thank God thousand-fold for the fact that the crisis has bypassed us," he said.