The Kremlin’s top political adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said on Saturday that Moscow expected the political situation in Uzbekistan to remain stable.
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Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon confirmed he will attend while Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov was reported to also be planning to go.
The uncertainty over Karimov’s health has raised concerns that Uzbekistan could face prolonged infighting among clans over leadership claims, something Islamic radicals could exploit.
Karimov was known as a tyrant with an explosive temper and a penchant for cruelty.
“I am confident that in joint efforts we will keep developing Russian-Uzbek cooperation for the benefit of our fraternal peoples”, the president said.
The authoritarian Karimov, 78, was pronounced dead late Friday after suffering a stroke last weekend and falling into a coma, authorities in the ex-Soviet country said, after evidence stacked up that they were hiding his death. “As Uzbekistan begins a new chapter in its history, the United States remains committed to partnership with Uzbekistan, to its sovereignty, security, and to a future based on the rights of all its citizens”. The country is a major cotton exporter and is also rich in gold and natural gas.
Both Russia and Kazakhstan – as well as neighboring Kyrgyzstan – sent their prime ministers, not presidents, to the funeral. The explosions killed 16 people and wounded more than 100.
(AP Photo/Umida Akhmedova). Police guard as people gather along a road to watch the funeral procession of President Islam Karimov in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, early Saturday, Sept. 3, 2016.
In July 2005, however, after Washington pushed for an global 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.
His rule saw the country emerge from the collapsing Soviet Union to become an independent nation.
Inoyatov’s reputation is seriously tarnished for his alleged role in the bloody suppression of protests in the eastern city of Andijan in 2005 – when hundreds of demonstrators are believed to have been gunned down in a massacre.
Angered by US criticism of the crackdown, Karimov evicted USA forces from the base.
Russia’s RIA-Novosti agency said the government announced the funeral would be Saturday in Samarkand, his birthplace.
“Karimov ruled through fear to erect a system synonymous with the worst human rights abuses: torture, disappearances, forced labour, and the systematic crushing of dissent”.
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Born on January 30, 1938 in the family of a civil servant, Karimov did his higher education at the Central Asian Polytechnic Institute, and finally graduated from the Tashkent Institute of National Economy with a Ph.D degree in Economic Sciences. “His successors will actively try to continue his policies”, opposition blogger Nadezhda Atayeva, who fled to France in 2000, told The Associated Press.
