Prime Minister NarendraModion Saturday condoled the passing away of Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov.
Advertisement
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will take part in the funeral of Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov in Samarkand, IRNA reported.
A short while later, state television footage showed Karimov’s coffin being driven through the streets of Samarkand, also lined with people paying their respects, en route to the Karimov family home.
Uzbekistan prepares to bury veteran leader Karimov was posted in World of TheNews International – https://www.thenews.com.pk on September 03, 2016 and was last updated on September 03, 2016.
The historic city center of Samarkand, which is known among other things as the site of the mausoleum of the brutal 14th centry warlord Tamerlane, was largely sealed off by police for the event.
The most likely reason for the official silence was that top government officials had been unable to decide on the succession and did not want to announce that Karimov was dead until they could also say who would replace him, at least temporarily. His death “is a great loss of the Uzbek people”, ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, according to state media.
Karimov, long the subject of rumours about his ill health, has now left no obvious successor in a country that has never held an election judged free and fair by global monitors.
Karimov had served as president since 1991.
Once seen as a potential heir to her father’s throne one-time socialite, pop star and business magnate Gulnara, 44, spectacularly fell from grace in a bitter family feud and was placed under house arrest in 2014.
Uzbekistan has never held elections deemed free and fair by global monitors, and Karimov won his fifth term in office last March with 90 per cent of the vote.
Under Uzbek law, senate head Nigmatulla Yuldashev has now become acting president until early elections are held.
His death pushes the strategically located landlocked country into a “phase of uncertainty”, the head of the Russian lower house of parliament’s worldwide affairs committee, Alexei Pushkov, said yesterday.
Karimov, one of Asia’s most autocratic leaders, ruled Uzbekistan for 27 years.
People gather to pay the tribute to Islam Karimov in Tashkent.
Karimov’s death leaves the future of the resource-rich country in question, said Andrey Kortunov, president of the New Eurasia Foundation.
Karimov’s Presidency was criticized by many human rights watchdogs, saying he was reliant of force to keep his citizens in check.
Advertisement
Flowers at the Uzbek Embassy in Moscow in memory of Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov.
