U.S. asks Uzbekistan to join multinational coalition against IS

PanARMENIAN.Net - The United States on Thursday, Aug 27, asked Uzbekistan to join the multinational coalition it leads against the Islamic State (also known as ISIL, or ISIS), saying Central Asia's most populous state was free to choose how to the fight against the armed group, Al Jazeera America reports.

"We have asked Uzbekistan ... to join the coalition," Daniel Rosenblum, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Central Asia, said during a visit to the Uzbek capital.

Uzbekistan, a majority Muslim nation with a population of 31 million, has been a strategic NATO partner in post-Soviet Central Asia, assisting a U.S.-led war on the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.

The U.S.-led coalition hitting ISIL force has a military component, apart from efforts to stop a flow of financing to ISIL, Rosenblum said.

The coalition also gathers information about the movement of people across borders and has five or six other "lines of efforts," Rosenblum said.

"Uzbekistan or any other country can choose to contribute to one or more of those elements," he said.