The US delegation, which included leading experts of the government agencies and heads of large corporations, was led by the US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake.

The agenda of the consultations included issues of bilateral cooperation in politics, trade-economic, investment, cultural-humanitarian and other spheres. The sides also exchanged opinion on international and regional issues of mutual interest.

With the satisfaction, the sides underlined positive trends in the Uzbek-US relations after the first round of political consultations, which was held in Washington in December 2009, UzA reported.

It was noted that visit of the State Secretary Hillary Clinton and other officials to Uzbekistan was important contribution to complex and long-term development process of the relations.

The US officials highly rated high economic growth and ongoing structural reforms, based on powerful economic and investment potential of Uzbekistan, its developed infrastructure, transport communications, stable banking-financial system and skilled cadres. For this reason, it is important for the USA to establish comprehensive cooperation with Uzbekistan.

The American side highly rated the Concept of further deepening democratic reforms, implemented in Uzbekistan and directed at expanding authority of the parliament, strengthening independent courts, increasing role of mass media and NGOs. The US side expressed interest in implementation of main clauses of the concept.

During the discussions of regional issues, Robert Blake on behalf of the US Government expressed gratitude to Uzbekistan for supply of power to Afghanistan, which allowed to 24-hour electricity supply to Kabul, as well as fast completion of construction of the first railroad up to Mazar-e-Sharif, which is another factor for economic rehabilitation of Afghanistan.

The sides discussed current affairs and perspectives of development of cooperation between Uzbekistan and the United States on wide directions of economic cooperation, including interactions on attracting US investments to implementation of high-technologic investment projects, including in power and energy saving, aviation, chemical, oil and gas sectors, development of financial-technical cooperation, interactions in healthcare.

The US side, noting significant potential of Uzbekistan, underlined that one of the priorities of the US government for further development of cooperation with Uzbekistan will be stimulating the US investments to economy of the country.

The sides acknowledged importance of cooperation in high-technologic industries and as the important directions are considering petrochemical, chemical, electrotechnical, machinery, pharmaceutical, ICT industries, etc. it was noted that such US companies as General Motors, Texaco, Chartis and others are successfully invested into Uzbekistan.

During the discussion of cooperation in energy sector, Robert Blake underlined development of alternative sources of energy is one of priorities of the US President Barak Obama. In this connection, the US side expressed interest in cooperation on effective use of traditional types of energy, development of projects on introduction of renewable energy.

In the result of the Uzbekistan-US Business Forum, which was held on 18 February, the agreements with Honeywell, Boeing, Exxon Mobil, Zeppelin International, Caterpillar, Inc. and Nukem were achieved on attracting US technologies and investments to fast developing industries of Uzbekistan, including into oil and gas, chemical, machinery, electrotechnical, construction materials and others.

At the end of the consultations, the sides confirmed their devotion to clauses and principles of the Declaration on Strategic Partnership and Cooperation Framework between Uzbekistan and the United States from 2002, as well as development of constructive and multipronged interaction in politics, trade-economic and investment sectors, security issues and strengthening civil society.