US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is travelling on Sunday to Samarkand in Uzbekistan to meet leaders of the C5+1 format, which brings together the United States and the five Central Asian states of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, according to media reports.
A senior State Department official told reporters on 16 October that representatives of more than 200 US companies, including Boeing, Citibank and Franklin Templeton, as well as firms working in critical minerals, would accompany Rubio, according to media reports. Officials from US development finance and export agencies and the National Security Council are also due to take part.
"For a very long time, the United States has focused on the Middle East and the East, and this region in between them, Central Asia, has not received the attention it deserves," the official said, adding that Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan alone had generated more than 30 billion dollars of new investment in the United States over the past year.
Media reports said Washington hopes the trip will lead to practical economic and security cooperation, including on counter-terrorism. Republican Senator John Curtis told the media that a stable Central Asia was essential for US interests at a time of instability elsewhere.
The region borders northern Afghanistan and is central to proposed transit and railway routes through the country. Rubio is due to travel on to India after Uzbekistan.
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