BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 28. US State Secretary Antony Blinken will focus on energy issues during his meeting with Central Asian partners, Ned Price, State Department Spokesperson, said, Trend reports.
"This is his first travel to Central Asia as Secretary. He’ll focus on energy and facilitating the critical minerals to the market, upholding the independence, the sovereignty, the territorial integrity of our Central Asian partners, and promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms," Price said.
According to the spokesperson, in Astana, Blinken will meet with senior Kazakh officials to further boost cooperation on matters of joint interest, and then participate in the C5+1 ministerial meeting.
"He’ll then participate in a forum that we have invested quite heavily in, the C5+1, in the form of a ministerial to reaffirm our commitment to, again, the independence, the sovereignty, the territorial integrity of our Central Asian partners, as well as to collaborate on regional solutions to shared global challenges. This forum will focus on the economy, on energy, on environmental and security cooperation between the US, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. He’ll also have an opportunity to meet bilaterally with all the members of the C5 to discuss some of these very issues before traveling to Uzbekistan," he added.
Meanwhile, C5+1 is a dialogue format created to address common issues of cooperation between the Central Asian states and the US.