OREANDA-NEWS. On July 27, 2007 Karim Massimov told the briefing that in the course of his meeting with President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan the sides had dwelt on a wide range of issues of bilateral cooperation between the two nations, reported the Official website www. government.kz.

At the end of the first day of his official visit to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan Prime Minister Karim Massimov commented on his meetings with the Uzbek leadership for the press.

Karim Massimov told the briefing that in the course of his meeting with President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan the sides had dwelt on a wide range of issues of bilateral cooperation between the two nations.

When commenting on the second sitting of the Interstate Coordination Council established under the patronage of President N. Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and President I. Karimov of Uzbekistan, Head of the Kazakh Government noted that the sitting was focused on trade-and-economic, social and culture cooperation.

”In the first half of 2007, trade turnover between our nations doubled as compared to the like period of 2006. We can presume that the task of bringing the figure up to USD 1 billion set by the two presidents can be accomplished in the current year”, K. Massimov said.

In the course of bilateral talks, the parties discussed cooperation in hydropower industry and tried to work out common positions on associate problems in the region. They also discussed infrastructure development, notably construction of automobile and rail roads.

K. Massimov emphasized that the positive experience of Uzbekistan in setting up car-assembly facilities is of great interest to Kazakhstan. “We have detailedly discussed development of the car-assembly industry in Uzbekistan as Kazakhstan plans to develop national car industry. I believe this is a promising sector for us”.