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Thank you very much.

It is really an honour and a pleasure to receive my good friend and partner in this adventure, the Foreign Minister [Abdulaziz Kamilov, of Uzebkistan] to Brussels. I visited Uzbekistan twice this year [Samarkand, November 2017; Tashkent,  March 2018] and this is, I think, the best signal, the best symbol of strengthened cooperation that is also part of a larger and broader engagement that the European Union and Central Asian countries have. The European Union is determined to support the very ambitious reform agenda that the President of Uzbekistan [Shavkat Mirziyoyev] has launched and that we discussed also now and I am very pleased that today we can formally launch negotiations for our new, ambitious and positive agreement with the Minister [Abdulaziz Kamilov]. I am sure that this will lead us to  increased cooperation and to benefits for both our citizens. So I am also pleased to hand over to the Minister [Abdulaziz Kamilov] our first draft on which our teams will now start to work.

Link to the video: http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/player.cfm?ref=I164256