The statement said Karimov, who was 78 and was said by diplomats to have suffered a stroke, would be buried in his hometown of Samarkand on Saturday according to Muslim traditions.
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Amid the confusion, leading Russian news agency Interfax announced the death, quoting the Uzbek government – only to withdraw its report later, citing a “technical error”.
The President of Georgia, Giorgi Margvelashvili, also expressed condolences in a statement on the presidential website.
His Cabinet, however, said in a statement that Karimov “attained a high authority in the country and in the worldwide community as an outstanding statesman, who has developed and implemented a deeply thought-out strategy of building a democratic constitutional state with a civil society and a market economy”.
Loyalist Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev is heading the organisation committee for the funeral, suggesting that he could be in line to take over long-term from Karimov.
It is with great regret that I received the news of the death of President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, outstanding statesman, public and political figure Islam Abduganiyevich Karimov.
Uzbekistan’s president Islam Karimov died on Friday, the government announced.
Earlier, even before his death was officially confirmed, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim offered his condolences.The two countries have close ethnic, cultural and linguistic ties.
Islam Karimov came to power as a Communist leader, and banned all political opposition and independent media in the country. It is also a major cotton exporter and is rich in gold and natural gas.
In July 2005, however, after Washington pushed for an worldwide investigation of the Andijan incident, the Uzbek government gave US forces six months to vacate the Karshi-Khanabad Airbase in southeastern Uzbekistan, where some 800 American troops had been stationed since 2001.
The house arrest of the once-untouchable Gulnara Karimova, 44, came after a war of words played out in the worldwide media during which she accused her mother and younger sister of sorcery, and assailed the country’s security chief on Twitter for harbouring presidential ambitions.
One of Mr Karimov’s daughters, Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, posted a black square on Instagram with the words: “He left us…”
Karimov was born January 30, 1938 in the city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
He came under widespread global criticism from human rights groups, but because of Uzbekistan’s location as a vital supply route for the war in neighboring Afghanistan, the West sometimes turned a blind eye to his worst abuses.
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Former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, accused Karimov’s security forces of executing two dissidents by boiling them to death.
