Distinguished guests, dear colleagues,

2025 was not just another year for Central Asia. It was a milestone — the year when our region, in political terms, closed one of the most difficult chapters of its post-independence history.

Just imagine: as recently as 2017, today’s level of openness would have been difficult to imagine. Borders were largely closed, direct flights were scarce, and even short journeys often required long detours.

Based on my own experience of working at the MFA, a telling example came in 2015, during the first C5+1 Ministerial with the United States in Samarkand. Tajikistan’s then foreign minister sought to enter Uzbekistan directly from nearby Panjakent. The Tajik side even asked the U.S. State Department to assist in resolving the issue, but the crossing remained closed, and he ultimately had to travel via Tashkent instead. Even high-level diplomacy was constrained by fragmented connectivity. More broadly, this episode showed that, at the time, we were still trying to address some of our own regional problems through third parties rather than directly with one another.

The contrast with the present is striking. Travel between Tashkent and Dushanbe, which once took much of the day, now takes less than an hour.

For many years, much of our regional diplomacy was focused on resolving bilateral issues. That work was necessary. Without it, nothing larger could have been built. And it is symbolic that this transition comes in the year when all Central Asian countries mark the 35th anniversary of their independence.

The historic Khujand Agreement reached last year confirmed that Central Asia is no longer defined by the problems of yesterday. It is beginning to define itself by the ambitions of tomorrow. In this sense, 2026 may well open a new page in regional cooperation.

No country in Central Asia is in active confrontation with another. The political climate is more stable, more cooperative, and more forward-looking than at any point in recent memory.

But this progress also changes the nature of the task before us. The question is no longer only: How do we resolve disputes between two neighbors? The new question is: How do we address common regional challenges involving five — and now increasingly six — countries, each with its own interests and priorities?

This is much more difficult. Coordinating approaches to water, energy, trade, transport, climate, and external partnerships requires a different level of regional thinking.

So with all that the first major question before us is: Now that peace and trust have been restored, what should Central Asia build on that foundation?

This brings me to the second point. The regional configuration itself is changing. At the Tashkent Summit last year, Azerbaijan was admitted as a full-fledged participant in the Consultative Meetings format. In practical terms, the familiar C5 logic is now evolving toward a C6 configuration.

This is not merely a symbolic expansion. Azerbaijan has become indispensable to Central Asia’s connectivity agenda. It is the region’s natural gateway across the Caspian to the South Caucasus, Türkiye, and Europe, and a key link in the Middle Corridor. Without Azerbaijan, Central Asia’s westward transport strategy remains incomplete.

But when a new member joins the family, the family adjusts. Many regional documents adopted in recent years were designed for five states. But with Azerbaijan now inside the regional framework, a reasonable question arises: Should some of these regional priorities now be revisited through a C6 lens?

Not rewritten from scratch, but adapted where necessary so that they reflect the interests of all six participants – especially in transport, trade corridors, energy connectivity, Caspian cooperation, and external coordination.

At the same time, the inclusion of Azerbaijan may mark the beginning of a broader rethinking of the region itself. We increasingly hear discussion of a “Greater Central Asia” – a wider space connecting Central Asia more closely with the South Caucasus, Afghanistan, and, in some visions, Mongolia. This is not an immediate institutional project. But it shows that the mental map of the region is expanding. For now, however, the practical focus is clearly C6.

And this raises another question: What happens now to all the C5+1 formats? Do they remain C5+1? Do they become C6+1? Or do they evolve case by case? For now, there is no single answer. The first Central Asia–Japan Summit in Tokyo and the first Central Asia–UK ministerial meeting in London both remained in the C5 format. This shows that the transition will not happen automatically. It will depend on partner countries, institutional habits, bureaucracy, and political imagination.

The first Korea–Central Asia Summit, scheduled for September 2026, will be especially interesting to watch as Azerbaijan is expected to join this Summit. If it does, it could become an important breakthrough in the evolution from C5+1 to C6+1 diplomacy.

Furthermore, we also have other new actors becoming more active in the regional agenda. Afghanistan is a clear example. The construction of the Qosh Tepa Canal on the Amu Darya makes the question of shared water resources even more urgent. It is no longer possible to discuss regional water management without engaging Afghanistan more systematically. In April 2026, Kabul hosted the first Afghanistan–Central Asia Consultative Dialogue, signaling its intention to engage the region more systematically on trade, transit, security, and climate-related challenges.

Now, another important question before our region today is: How far should regional cooperation in Central Asia be institutionalized? We already see movement in this direction. In 2023, the Dushanbe Summit established a Council of National Coordinators. In 2025, the Tashkent Summit advanced discussions on a “Community of Central Asia,” a rotating Secretariat, special representatives of the presidents, and a Council of Elders.

These proposals show that Central Asia is gradually moving from an informal dialogue among leaders toward a more structured regional mechanism. The Consultative Meetings are no longer just annual summits; they are beginning to generate permanent coordination tools, follow-up bodies, and ideas for a clearer institutional framework. The key challenge is to build this structure without losing the respect for sovereignty that have made the format successful so far.

Central Asia does not need to copy anyone else. It needs a model that fits Central Asian realities. One principle, however, should remain clear: institutionalization must never be imposed. Uzbekistan is ready to go as far as our regional partners are willing to go. If cooperation is forced, it will damage the trust that has taken years to build. If it grows organically, it can become durable.

Let me now turn to my last point. All of this transformation is unfolding in a rapidly changing international environment. The world around Central Asia is becoming more fragmented, more competitive, and less predictable. Instability in Eastern Europe has affected northern routes. Conflicts involving Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and the Persian Gulf have created uncertainty around southern access to global markets. At the same time, competition over energy, critical minerals, food security, transport corridors, and technology supply chains has brought new attention to our region.

This is why, for Central Asian states, multi-vector diplomacy is an absolute necessity. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was largely a state-building strategy: maintaining relations with Russia, developing ties with China, engaging the West, and entering international institutions.

However, today, it is becoming more mature. It is no longer only about balancing external powers. It is about using partnerships to support modernization, economic diversification, connectivity, reform, and long-term resilience.

But this should not be seen as a move against any partner. Central Asia’s diversification is not a zero-sum game. A region with more routes, more markets, and more diplomatic platforms can be a more stable and predictable partner for everyone.

For Central Asia itself, diversification means reducing dependence on any single corridor or market, attracting investment from different directions, and building enough internal capacity to negotiate from a position of confidence.

This is where connectivity becomes central. For landlocked countries, sovereignty is a logistical condition. A country with several reliable transport routes, ports, and markets has far more room for maneuver than one dependent on a narrow set of corridors.

Given the recent events in the Middle East, I think it is important to mention that Iran is an important part of the connectivity map. In 2025, bilateral and transit railway freight between Uzbekistan and Iran reached 1.2 million tons, up 33.7 percent from the previous year. Iran offers one of the shortest routes to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. At the same time, instability around Iran, the Gulf, and the Strait of Hormuz illustrates why no single southern route can be sufficient.

Iran is also an important source of imports for many Central Asian countries, including food products and agricultural goods. This makes the Iranian direction relevant not only for transport connectivity, but also for food security, price stability, and the resilience of regional supply chains. Thus, the situation can quickly affect fuel, food, and transport costs across Central Asia. Therefore, the lesson is not to avoid Iran, but to maintain several reliable outlets to global markets.

The broader strategic lesson is simple: from our perspective, connectivity must be diversified in all directions – westward through the Caspian and the South Caucasus, southward through Afghanistan and Pakistan, southwestward through Iran and the Persian Gulf, eastward through China, and northward through Kazakhstan and existing Eurasian routes. These are not competing choices. They are complementary options.

To sum up, Central Asia is entering a new stage of development. The task ahead is not to choose between partners, but to deepen regional coordination, diversify connections, and turn the trust we have built into lasting collective strength. And this, in fact, is the heart of the new regional paradigm.