Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb.14 / Trend /
The U.S. made a significant progress in expanding cooperation with the Central Asian countries, Assistant Secretary on Central and Southern Asia Robert O. Blake said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
"I think we feel that we've made very good progress in expanding our engagement with all of the governments of Central Asia," he said in an interview.
He said that the U.S. established a series of annual bilateral consultations with each of the countries to discuss in detail the full range of bilateral priorities and to set concrete targets to make progress in each of those areas.
"I will be going out in fact next week to Turkmenistan first, to have our six month review with them, and then to Uzbekistan after that for our first annual bilateral consultations in Tashkent," Blake said.
According to him, overall a good progress was made in the cooperation, particularly on Afghanistan.
Each of the region's countries is providing the U.S. with help in various ways. Some of them provide humanitarian assistance, some of them assist with the Northern Distribution Network, Blake believes.
According to him, others are helping with scholarships as Kazakhstan is doing.
"So I think we're making good progress there and we'll continue to work very closely with them," he said.
According to Blake, on the economic front, the relations between our countries are still relatively under-developed with the exception of Kazakhstan where American companies have a very significant and growing presence. "So that's an area where I think the U.S. would like to do more and we hope to be able to expand trade and investment with the Central Asian countries," he said.
Also Blake noted the issue on the state of political and religious freedoms in the region.
"On the very important piece that you mentioned about political and religious freedoms, again, there needs to be much more progress in that area. I think we're very concerned about the decline in some cases of political freedoms in several countries. We very much welcomed the elections last year, the first free parliamentary elections that took place in Kyrgyzstan and we'll continue to support the democratic developments that are taking place in that country," he said.
Answering the question on repetition of the Egyptian scenario in the central Asia, Blake noted that one should not make comparisons here, because countries are always so different from each other.
"But I think that all of the leaders around the world need to look at the situation in Egypt, and many countries could benefit from some of those lessons. I think I've just described some of the areas where I think more openness is needed. So I very much hope that people will take a hard look at what's going on there and how they themselves can respond to the aspirations of their people in their countries," he said.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who ruled the country since 1981, resigned on Friday. Power in the country was transferred to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces of Egypt.Large-scale anti-governmental protests were held in Egypt. Thousands of people in different cities across the country went to the streets, demanding President Hosni Mubarak's resignation and the dissolution of parliament. The unrests in the country have killed at least 300 people and have injured over 4,000.