DUSHANBE, August 1, 2013, Asia-plus – Tajik President Emomali Rahmon met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow on August 1 to discuss a wide range of issues related to bilateral cooperation between their countries, the Tajik president’s official website reports.
The sides discussed various aspects of economic and military and technical cooperation between Tajikistan and the Russian Federation as well as joint efforts to provide regional security.
Rahmon and Putin, in particular, discussed the issues of Tajik labor migrants working in Russia and Russian participation in energy projects in Tajikistan.
In the course of the talks, President Putin noted that Russia now accounts for 21 percent of Tajikistan’s external trade turnover and the volume of Russian investment in Tajikistan’s economy has amounted to 1.5 billion U.S. dollars.
Russian leader also highly appraised the level of educational cooperation between the two countries, noting that some 5,000 Tajik students are currently studying at Russian universities.
President Emomali Rahmon, for his part, expressed confidence that the meeting would produce positive results in various areas of cooperation, including military, trade and economic cooperation, labor migration, duty-free supplies of Russian oil products to Tajikistan.
The sides also discussed issues related to ratification of documents that were signed during Russian president’s visit to Dushanbe in October last year. These issues are expected to be solved in the near future.
The two also discussed a number of international and regional issues being of mutual interest, including the security situation in Central Asia after the planned 2014 departure of the bulk of foreign forces from Afghanistan.
Tajikistan’s minister of defense, minister of economic development and trade, minister of energy and industry, and the head of Tajikistan’s migration service are accompanying Rahmon on his visit to Russia.
