U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that Washington aims to deepen its partnership with Central Asian nations as he pressed regional leaders to expand opportunities for American businesses.
Before heading to India on a tour mixing diplomacy and commerce, Rubio arrived in Uzbekistan's Silk Road city of Samarkand late Sunday for negotiations with top officials from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the Uzbek hosts.
The leaders of the five former Soviet republics met U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in November last year, as the United States seeks stronger ties in a region with vast natural resources but where China has emerged as a key competitor.
Heading a delegation including numerous business executives, Rubio visited Samarkand's old city, a historic staging post between China and the West, before meeting regional leaders.
"The United States wants to be a strong partner in Central Asia, obviously rooted in this country, but also all the neighbouring countries who want to do more business and trade with us," he told journalists.
"We have an incredible delegation, almost 300 American businesses that are here with us, and the opportunity to sign billions of dollars of agreements that will both enrich the countries in the region, but also benefit the United States economically," he said.
Later Monday, the State Department said the U.S. and Uzbekistan had concluded more than 50 contracts worth a combined $12 billion in sectors including tech, industrial modernization, transport and energy.
With Washington stuck in a war with Iran and unable to halt Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Rubio has stepped up his foreign travel with recent trips to Europe and Latin America, while leaving Trump to handle the conflicts and the U.S. mid-term elections.
But Rubio insisted this week's tour is of strategic importance.
"This is an important relationship," he said shortly before his departure. "There's countries you'd like to get to because we want to build our relationships with them."
Asked by AFP whether Washington's push in Central Asia was aimed at countering China's growing influence, Rubio replied: "It's competition."
"There's no part of the world in which we feel like America and American business should not have a fair shot to compete."
Rubio also pushed back against suggestions there had been a "pause" in U.S .intelligence-sharing with Kyiv, and urged Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to "focus" on ending the war.
After Uzbekistan, Rubio will go to India, where the U.S. ambassador is Sergio Gor, who was born in Uzbekistan and is also the U.S. special envoy for Central Asia.
The Central Asian states remain linked to Russia by energy pipelines and security and migratory networks, but Russian influence has eroded since the start of its invasion of Ukraine.
And China has reaped the benefits. It is now the main trade partner of all five nations.
Chinese companies have signed a number of energy-related deals, seeking to buy natural gas in Turkmenistan, uranium in Kazakhstan and rare earths in Tajikistan.
In a joint statement after the talks, the U.S. and the five Central Asian countries pledged to "strive for a Central Asia that returns to the center of the global economy", including through development of the Trans-Caspian trade route.
Also known as the Middle Corridor, the route links China to Europe through Central Asia, the Caucasus and Turkey while bypassing Russia. It has attracted growing interest since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Crossing Central Asia shortens delivery times while avoiding riskier routes, including the Red Sea-Suez Canal shipping corridor and overland routes through Russia, which have been complicated by Western sanctions.
On his second visit to India this year, Rubio will have stops in Mumbai and Jamnagar in Gujarat state. Both are major port cities.
"We're very close" to a trade deal with India, a second senior U.S. official said of negotiations with the Asian giant that have dragged on for months.
The two sides reached a provisional agreement in February aimed at reducing U.S. tariffs on Indian products.
But legal battles in U.S. courts over Trump's tariffs have fuelled uncertainty about when a bilateral trade deal could take effect.
India-U.S. relations were also rattled when Trump imposed 25% tariffs on Indian goods in retaliation for Delhi's purchases of Russian oil, but those duties have since been lifted.