Further details of his death were not immediately available from the mostly opaque country, where media freedom and human rights have been harshly repressed.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin called Karimov’s death “a great loss for the people of Uzbekistan” in a telegram to interim leader Yuldashev, while Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is set to jet in for the funeral.
At the Samarkand ceremony, Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev, 59, and Finance Minister Rustam Azimov, 57, were allocated spots in the front row, nearest to Karimov’s coffin.
Since the announcement of his death, a three-day mourning period was declared, and the preparations accelerated in Samarkand, Uzbekistan’s second city, Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons said, reporting from Bishkek in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan.
The President of Georgia, Giorgi Margvelashvili, also expressed condolences in a statement on the presidential website.
MOSCOW (AP) – Islam Karimov, whose harsh and ill-tempered rule governed Uzbekistan for a quarter-century, is to be buried in his home city of Samarkand.
“We are in constant contact with the Iranian embassy in Tashkent to take part in funeral of late president of Uzbekistan at the highest possible level”, Qassemi said.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who appointed Karimov to head the former Socialist Republic of Uzbekistan in 1989, told Interfax news agency that Karimov was “a competent man with a strong character”.
There are conflicting reports about whether Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov has died.
Karimov’s elder daughter Gulnara, described as “the single most hated person in the country” in a US diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, said in a letter to a BBC journalist in 2014 that she was beaten and put under house arrest after a fall from grace with her father, sparked by her criticism of top officials around him.
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon confirmed he will attend the funeral while Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani were reported to be also planning to go.
He died September 2 in Tashkent, the nation’s capital, according to a statement published on the Uzbekistan government’s website.
U.S. President Barack Obama said “at this challenging time.the United States reaffirms its support for the people of Uzbekistan”, in a statement that avoided lauding the deceased autocrat.
“I still can’t believe it happened”.
But Karimov’s relationship with the USA took a hit in 2002, after a State Department report found Karimov’s security forces tortured people, especially Muslims, under the guise of combating terrorism.
If they fail to agree on a compromise, however, open confrontation could destabilise the mainly Muslim state that shares a border with Afghanistan.
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Karimov’s death leaves the future of the resource-rich country in question, said Andrey Kortunov, president of the New Eurasia Foundation.
