Uzbekistan's Saida Mirziyoyeva meets Donald Trump
Saida Mirziyoyeva, head of Uzbekistan's Presidential Administration, said on October 2 that she had met US President Donald Trump during a working visit to the United States, and conveyed greetings from President Shavkat Mirziyoyev. The meeting precedes a scheduled mid-October visit to Uzbekistan by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is expected to travel to Samarkand with a delegation representing more than 100 US companies and to take part in a Central Asia Five+1 meeting with the foreign ministers of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. During the same US visit, Mirziyoyeva met BlackRock executives about the planned Tashkent International Financial Centre, discussed WTO accession with director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and met Google vice president Karan Bhatia about YouTube monetisation in Uzbekistan.
Why it matters: The visit sits within the briefing's critical-minerals theme, since the US is expanding investment across Central Asia with a particular emphasis on sourcing critical minerals.