“The United States said on Thursday it had asked Uzbekistan to join the multinational coalition it leads against Islamic State, saying Central Asia’s most populous state was free to choose a way of contributing to the fight against the militant group.
‘We have asked Uzbekistan … to join the coalition,’ Daniel Rosenblum, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Central Asia, told reporters during a visit to the Uzbek capital.
Uzbekistan, a mainly 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 purist Taliban movement in neighboring Afghanistan.”
Source: U.S. asks Uzbekistan to join anti-Islamic State coalition | Reuters