US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned Uzbekistan on Tuesday that it needed more than shared military interests for good relations with Washington, which welcomed a rare concession on human rights by Tashkent.
After meeting Uzbek President Islam Karimov, Rumsfeld told a news conference that US defence relations with Uzbekistan - a strong supporter of the US "war on terrorism" - were strong "and growing stronger every month".
But asked if the Central Asian state's controversial record on human rights would weigh heavily in the future, he replied: "Relationships between sovereign nations tend not to be on a single pillar. They tend to involve economic, political - in this case human rights - as well as security issues."