SAMARKAND (Dispatches) -- Iran and Uzbekistan on Wednesday signed a total of 17 memoranda of understanding (MoUs) as the two countries seek to expand bilateral ties.
The documents were signed in a ceremony attended by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, his Uzbek counterpart Shavkat Mirziyoyev and their accompanying delegations of ministers and government officials in the Uzbek city of Samarkand.
Iran’s official IRNA news agency said the MoUs would allow Iran and Uzbekistan to boost their cooperation in the fields of trade, cargo transit, cultural exchanges, health and customs issues, among others.
Raisi’s website said in a report that Iranian president had hailed the signing of the documents as a major step toward the expansion of economic and trade ties between Iran and Uzbekistan.
He said the two countries can easily increase the size of their bilateral trade by three to four times from a current annual figure of around $500 million.
The Iranian president has traveled to Samarkand to attend a key summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Iran applied for SCO memberships last year during the bloc’s summit in Tajikistan. Reports have said that Raisi will sign a binding document of the SCO membership during the Samarkand summit planned for September 15-16.
The move will pave the way for Iran’s full membership in the eight-member bloc, which include Russia and China, in April next year.
During his meeting with Mirziyoyev on Wednesday, Raisi appreciated Uzbekistan’s endorsement of Iran’s SCO membership bid.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization -- made up of China, Russia, India, Pakistan and four ex-Soviet Central Asian countries -- was set up in 2001 as a political, economic and security organization to rival Western institutions.
The summit set for Thursday and Friday in the Uzbek city is the first entirely face-to-face leaders’ meeting since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
“One of the important acts of this summit will be the finalization of SCO (membership) documents and the legal process they will need to take in order to be signed by the foreign ministers of the member countries,” Raisi said in Tehran before heading to Samarkand.
Iran, one of four SCO observer states, had applied for full membership in 2008 but its bid was slowed by UN and U.S. sanctions.
At a conference in Dushanbe in September last year, members of the bloc endorsed Iran’s future membership.
Tehran wants to “make the most of the economic power and the capacities of the region and of Asian countries for the benefit of the Iranian nation”, Raisi said.
The Kremlin said Tuesday that this week’s summit in Samarkand will showcase an “alternative” to the West.

The move comes as Iran and the remaining signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal have been struggling to revive it.
Since last year, Iran has been engaged in EU-brokered talks to revive the deal with the renewed involvement of the United States, which pulled out in 2018.
Seeking warmer ties with neighbors and regional countries has been a key plank of Raisi’s foreign policy efforts since he came to office in August 2021.
His administration has touted increased trade ties with countries in the Central Asia region, including Uzbekistan, as a major success for Iran at a time the country is facing foreign economic pressure.