DUSHANBE, August 23, 2011, Asia-Plus  -- Uzbek President Islam Karimov will not attend the upcoming CIS summit in Dushanbe, the Uzbek Embassy in Dushanbe reports.

Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoev will represent Uzbekistan at a meeting of CIS heads of state in Dushanbe, the source said.

As it had been reported earlier, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev will also not attend the CIS summit in Dushanbe and Azerbaijan will be represented at the summit by Prime Minister Artur Rasizade.

According to the CIS Executive Committee, a meeting of the CIS council of foreign ministers that will take place in Dushanbe on September 2 will consider 16 issues.  The CIS foreign ministers will discuss the report on the results of the CIS activities over the past 20 years and tasks for the future.  The document will be submitted for consideration to the meeting of the CIS heads of state that will be held in the Tajik capital on September 3.

The CIS foreign ministers’ meeting will also consider a number of issues related to further expansion of the security cooperation as well as a draft program for cooperation in countering illegal migration designed for 2012-2014 and draft agreements on handover of samples of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substance and their precursors as well as on providing industrial safety of dangerous production facilities and draft document on the bureau for the coordination of fight against organized crime and other types of crimes within the CIS area.   

We will recall that Tajikistan assumed the rotating CIS chairmanship for this year and Dushanbe will host the next annual CIS summit set for September 2011.    

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics, formed during the breakup of the Soviet Union.  It now consists of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Georgia pulled out of the organization in 2009.