On August 6, the Third Consultative Meeting of Central Asian Leaders took place in Turkmenistan’s Avaza National Tourist Zone.

The summit chaired by the President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov was attended by the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan ShavkatMirziyoyev, the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the President of the Kyrgyz Republic SadyrZhaparov and the President of the Republic of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon, as well as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Central Asia, Head of the UN Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia Natalia Gherman.

Central Asia is a region of great geostrategic and geo-economic importance. More than 74 million people live here. The history and culture of the peoples, the economy and infrastructure of the region’s countries are closely interconnected.

As the Leader of Uzbekistan has repeatedly noted, the region’s countries face the main goal – to turn Central Asia into a stable, economically developed and prosperous region by joint efforts. President ShavkatMirziyoyev in 2017 came up with an initiative to organize a Consultative Meeting of Central Asian Leaders to achieve this goal and to fully realize the potential of the region, strengthen relations of mutual trust, good-neighborliness and cooperation.

This initiative, which meets the fundamental interests of the fraternal peoples of the region’s countries, received broad support and quickly became a reality. The First Summit of Leaders took place in March 2018 in the capital of Kazakhstan, Nur-Sultan, and the second in November 2019 in the city of Tashkent.

The summit in Avaza was also very rich and informative.

During the summit the President of Uzbekistan expressed his vision on the current issues and put forward several proposals.

It was noted that today’s realities require decisive steps to form a new model of economic cooperation in Central Asia. It is important to identify new growth points, new development drivers for the long term.

It is in the common strategic interests of the Central Asian countries to effectively use the transport and transit potential of the region. An extensive and integrated transport system can become a key transit hub on the Eurasian continent.

In this regard, the President of Uzbekistan called for the fullest possible loading of the existing transport corridors and infrastructure, including the ports of the Caspian Sea, large cross-border logistics centers.

In addition, Uzbekistan expects to use the potential of the Trans-Afghan corridor “Termez – Mazar-i-Sharif – Kabul – Peshawar”, the road and railways “China – Kyrgyzstan – Uzbekistan”.

The President of Uzbekistan also proposed to intensify the activities of the Electric Power Coordination Council of Central Asia, to hold regular meetings of the ministers of agriculture of the region’s countries and introduce a regional food security monitoring system in the agenda of their first meeting, to launch a unified information system for the recognition of test results and vaccination certificates, expand the exchange of experience in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases, to develop a regional program “Green Agenda” for Central Asia” and etc.

Upon the outcomes of the meeting, the Joint Statement of the Heads of States of Central Asia was adopted.