SAMARKAND /Uzbekistan/, November 11. /TASS/: The threat of radical Islam, which is soaring due to the situation in Afghanistan, may bring about a certain rapprochement in relations among Central Asian countries, but it will not result in the emergence of a coalition, the research director of the discussion club Valdai, Fyodor Lukyanov, told TASS on the sidelines of the club’s 10th Asian conference.
"The problem of radicalism may serve as a factor for the Central Asian countries to unite, but we should be aware that whenever national security is at stake, in the final count each country will rely on itself and handle these problems the way it deems right," he said. "This does not rule out coordination or mutual support, but as the example of many countries, including the United States, indicates, efforts to build long-term coalitions on the basis of struggle against religious extremism and terrorism never succeed."
Lukyanov believes that given the specifics of counter-terrorist activity and the uniqueness of each of the extremist groups, it will be impossible to present a common front on this issue.
The situation in Afghanistan, where alongside the Taliban (outlawed in Russia) there are more radical forces opposed to this movement, shows that threats to the security of Central Asian countries will mount. In this connection he pointed out that competent policies by the Uzbek authorities have been preventing fundamentalist ideas from penetrating into Uzbekistan.
"Our Uzbek counterparts are well aware of the threat of radical Islamism. At the same time they believe that their country does enough to minimize it and prevent it from turning into an imperative," Lukyanov noted. "Uzbekistan remains firmly closed to all sorts of foreign interpreters of Islam. This policy began back in the 1990s with the purpose of neutralizing foreign influence on the Muslims here."
The two-day conference that began on November 10 has brought together scholars from Russia, Germany, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and other countries. Its co-organizer is the Institute for Strategic and Inter-Regional Studies under the President of Uzbekistan, the country’s leading think tank created in 1992. This is the first time the Valdai club is holding its conference in Uzbekistan.
