US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met students learning English at Uzbekistan State World Languages University

Tashkent (AFP) - US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday pressed Uzbekistan’s leaders to address human rights as they pursue nascent reforms, on a trip to woo Central Asia amid tensions with Russia.

A day after joining counterparts from all five former Soviet republics in Central Asia in Kazakhstan, Blinken held talks in Uzbekistan, with US officials seeing the two countries as especially eager for closer ties.

Blinken was meeting Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who has pledged economic reforms as well as a limited political opening since succeeding the autocratic Islam Karimov in 2016.

Opening the day of talks, Blinken said that he would discuss Mirziyoyev’s reforms and praised the “dynamic relationship” with Uzbekistan.

Blinken spoke to Foreign Minister Bakhtiyor Saidov about increasing US investment, State Department spokesman Ned Price said, while the two officials also discussed neighbouring Afghanistan, where Uzbekistan assisted the United States in its two-decade war.

Blinken “also urged the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the safeguarding of media freedom and transparency,” Price said.

Mirziyoyev last month said that officials were pressing him “to restrain the media, but I’ll never do this.”

But rights groups say the media is still heavily controlled despite some loosening, and that critics of the government still face jail.

Uzbekistan also saw deadly unrest last year sparked by planned reforms that would have undermined autonomy in the impoverished Karakalpakstan region, prompting a rare backtracking by Mirziyoyev.

But US officials have also praised Mirziyoyev’s government for a sweeping effort to eliminate forced and child labour in the cotton industry.

Blinken a day earlier pledged another $25 million to help reduce Central Asia’s economic dependence on Russia, which has long been the dominant player in the region but whose invasion of Ukraine has rattled other former Soviet republics.

In Tashkent, Blinken toured a university where US funding is backing instruction in English – part of Washington’s push to expand connections with Central Asia.

Blinken said US support has trained some 10,000 English-language teachers in Uzbekistan.

“One of the realities now in this moment in history – and it was different before and it will probably be different in the future – but at least right now, English is probably the international language,” Blinken told students as he described his own experience learning French.

Pointing to the English language’s role in business and the internet, Blinken said, “In many ways, English is the most important export from the United States to other countries.”