Your Excellency! 

Let me congratulate you and the entire friendly nation of Japan sincerely on behalf of the Uzbek people and me personally on a significant date – the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Uzbekistan and Japan. 

I would like to note with a feeling of deep contentment that over the past period, our countries achieved significant progress in extending mutually advantageous cooperation on the bilateral and multilateral levels. 

The mutual relations of genuine friendship, strategic partnership and cooperation with Japan are highly valued in the Republic of Uzbekistan. 

Your official visit to Uzbekistan in October 2015 was the most important event in the history of the Uzbek-Japanese relations and gave even greater dynamism to the further development of our relations in the political, trade-economic, financial-investment, technological, scientific and cultural-humanitarian spheres. 

Over the 25 years of cooperation, we were able to create a solid law-based foundation for our relations, the basic element of which is the 2002 Joint Declaration on Friendship, Strategic Partnership and Cooperation. The joint statement, signed during your visit to Uzbekistan, on extending and expanding the strategic partnership between the Republic of Uzbekistan and Japan took our relationship to a higher level and showed the sides’ deep mutual understanding and firm political will to expand the bilateral ties. 

The sides’ views on and approaches to many topical international and regional issues coincide. 

Uzbekistan is satisfied with the mechanism of interaction created over the years of cooperation. 

The inter-parliamentary forum, joint sessions of the Uzbek-Japanese and the Japanese-Uzbek committees for economic cooperation, political consultations between the ministries of foreign affairs, the Central Asia + Japan Dialogue, academic forums and many other joint institutions ensure the phased and consistent development of the Uzbek-Japanese relations. 

Today Japan is one of our country’s most significant and priority partners in the economic modernization and socio-economic development of the country. 

We are grateful to our Japanese partners for the help being provided, and are interested in the further expansion of the investment and financial-technical cooperation, the extension of direct contacts and fruitful interaction between the business circles of Uzbekistan and Japan. 

Ties in the sphere of cultural and scientific-academic exchanges are of special significance to our country. The visit of a delegation of socio-political circles and culture officers led by your wife, Ms Akie Abe, to Uzbekistan in August 2016 was an important event in the development of cooperation in this sphere. 

I would like to emphasise specifically the high level of cooperation in the educational sphere. We highly value the help being provided by Japan in this sphere and hope that the full functioning of the Uzbek-Japanese youth innovation centre will give an additional impetus to our joint work in the sphere of training highly-qualified personnel. 

Making use of this opportunity, I would like to reaffirm Uzbekistan’s firm adherence to the policy of the consistent extension and dynamic expansion of cooperation with Japan. We are willing to qualitatively strengthen the strategic partnership relations and to give them new practical substance. 

I express confidence that on the basis of common values shared by our countries and long-terms interests, the traditional friendly ties between Uzbekistan and Japan will continue to develop in every way possible for the good of the peoples of the two countries. 

Making use of this pleasant opportunity, I genuinely wish Your Excellency robust health and wellbeing, and wish the Japanese people further progress and prosperity. 

With deep respect,