People hold flowers as they gather along the road to watch the funeral procession of President Islam Karimov in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Saturday, Sept. 3, 2016.
Advertisement
Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov was laid to rest on Saturday in his home city of Samarkand during a state funeral, which was attended by various foreign delegations, officials said.
In the Soviet period, Karimov served as first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic from 1989 to 1991.
The veteran leader, 78, who died on Friday, several days after suffering a stroke, played Russia, China and the West off against one other to avoid total isolation as he steered his strategic state out of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Karimov ended his more than 25 years of rule in the Central Asian nation with no clear successor lined up.
“When we found out about his death, my family were all crying, we couldn’t believe it”, said a 58-year- old local man, who refused to give his name. China has always been concerned at links between Islamist militants in Central Asia and those Beijing accuses of promoting separatism in the violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang.
Central Asia analysts say a small circle of senior officials and Karimov family members will have been meeting behind closed doors to try to agree on anointing a new president.
It was often the case in Soviet times, reports CNN, that the leader of the funeral commission was the one to take over the role of leader.
Apart from Mirziyoyev, his deputy, Rustam Azimov, has also been seen as a possible successor.
Karimov jailed, killed or exiled most of the Islamist fighters inside Uzbekistan.
Over the years, the group has been affiliated with the Taliban, al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, and it has sent fighters overseas.
Unrest would have repercussions for Russian Federation, the regional power and home to hundreds of thousands of Uzbek migrant workers, and for the US-allied government in Afghanistan.
However, in a statement released before the funeral, Karimov’s Cabinet praised him in eulogistic tones, saying that he was “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”.
The next day, the president’s daughter said he had suffered a brain haemorrhage. His daughter, dressed all in black, was dabbing her eyes with a white handkerchief.
As Uzbekistan begins a new chapter in its history, the USA remains committed to partnership with Uzbekistan, to its sovereignty, security, and to a future based on the rights of all its citizens, Obama added.
Advertisement
His death pushes the strategically located landlocked country into a “phase of uncertainty”, the head of the Russian lower house of parliament’s global affairs committee, Alexei Pushkov, said yesterday.
