This is CBS. I am the world with a Caterina Zolo Tava. I am John Bachelord. A Caterina is in Moscow,

writing about Uzbekistan, a very promising and resource-rich country. Beautiful, beautiful.

Agriculture, very rich in soils, a vast landscape, a large and growing population.

It is a Muslim country, yes, but it is a post-Soviet Muslim country, very modern young people,

multilingual, and with natural gas and oil reserves, uranium reserves, lots of extractive services reserves.

So, Caterina reports that there's a reluctance in Tashkhen to join with a union in any fashion with

the Russians, the Russians and the Kazakhs, or to take investment that would dominate from other

parts of the world. And yet, Caterina has understood that Tashkhen is concerned about neutrality because

of sanctions. That seems to be a fresh development. At this point, they also want to diversify their trade.

What does that mean? Diversification. I saw lots of goods from China in Tashkhen.

So, what is it that they, what is their perfect solution to being in the middle of all of this desire

for people from the outside to invest? What does Uzbekistan want? As you mentioned, Uzbekistan wants

to be neutral and to keep its sovereignty. And as you mentioned very correctly, the most important

is the diversification. Uzbekistan is very afraid of being very dependent on Russia. Before the

Russian part in the life of Uzbekistan was really high. The infrastructure was directed to Russia,

the production was directed to Russia. It was one system in the Soviet Union. Now Uzbekistan

doesn't want to see this and it understands that to keep sovereignty, it needs to have the balance.

For example, if there is the Russian presence, there should be the presence of other countries as well.

For example, China, Korea, other Asian countries, the Arab world is also very well-cantant,

the European and the United States, so everyone. Uzbekistan wants to see a lot of investors and not

from only one country, but from many countries. Uzbekistan has more investments in the market and

to be less dependent on the decision on some geopolitical tools that country can use.

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