Last week was taken up with the annual session of the Uzbek-British Trade and Industry Council, known as UBTIC.
It brings together representatives of British companies working or interested in working in Uzbekistan, and of Government Ministries and state holding companies on the Uzbek side.
It’s the biggest event of the commercial year for us, a chance for the Uzbek Government to promote projects for which it’s looking for investment, and for British companies to set out what they have to offer, and raise any issues of concern.
The British team were led by the Right Honourable Peter Lilley, a senior Member of Parliament and former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. In addition to UBTIC, Peter met Uzbek Ministers and parliamentarians, and spoke to students at two of Tashkent’s top universities, the Westminster International University in Tashkent (WIUT) and the University of the World Economy and Diplomacy (UWED).
WIUT is a remarkable institution. Set up in 2002, its tuition is all in English, and it awards degrees validated by Westminster University in the UK. The students who attended Peter Lilley’s lecture were an impressive lot. Their English ranged from excellent to perfect.
They asked interesting, sometimes surprising questions: about the portrayal of Mrs Thatcher in “The Iron Lady”, the LIBOR scandal, the role of the financial sector in the UK economy, whether British law operates within the Houses of Parliament.
We had lunch with some of the students and some of the young people who have studied in the UK under the FCO’s Chevening Scholarship Scheme, young men and women with ambition and intellectual curiosity who have spent a year doing post-graduate studies in the UK and come back to use their knowledge and experience in Uzbekistan.
Some are in business, some in public service, some working for international organisations; all, I think, doing something positive for the development of their country.
On Sunday I saw a different side of Tashkent. I went with my family to the mausoleum of Zengi Ata, a little south of the city. Zengi Ata was a 13th century Sufi saint, but his mausoleum and that of his wife, close by, date from the late 14th century.
On a warm autumn afternoon, there were perhaps a couple of hundred people there, praying in the mosque or in the Ambar Bibi mausoleum, filling bottles with the water that feeds the pool outside the compound, or wandering in the sun, often in families, sometimes three generations together.
The shrine is particularly visited by couples who want children, but it seemed to attract a much wider public. There was more traditional dress than one sees in central Tashkent, and an air of quiet piety.