Uzbek president Karimov taken to hospital -government

Talk of succession in the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan has begun as the country’s authoritarian president, Islam Karimov, lies in an intensive care unit after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke, his younger daughter announced on Monday. She said he was considered stable but that “it was too”.

A day earlier, the Cabinet of Ministers published a cryptic statement saying that Karimov had been hospitalized and “would require a certain amount of time for medical assessment and treatment”.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov has been taken to hospital, the Uzbek government said in a statement on Sunday.

“The Kremlin wishes a quick recovery to the president of Uzbekistan”, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

“In this case we would really like to receive only positive news on the president’s state of health”.

His elder daughter Gulnara Karimova, a flamboyant figure formerly seen as a potential successor, was detained under house arrest in 2014 after openly criticising officials and family members on Twitter.

Mr Karimov has been criticised for his record on human rights – hundreds of demonstrators were killed in the response to protests in the city of Andijan in 2005, for example – but he has managed to stay in power since 1989, including controlling the country through the independence it gained from Moscow in 1991.

The analyst said he considers Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Azimov to be the most likely successors, but Karimov has been reluctant to favor either of them publicly.

The reported arrest of the once-untouchable Gulnara Karimova, 44, came after a war of words played out in the global media during which she accused her mother and younger sister of sorcery, and assailed the country’s security chief on Twitter for harbouring presidential ambitions. She revealed in a 2013 interview that she had not spoken to Gulnara for 12 years.

FILE In this file photo taken on Friday, July 10, 2015, Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov gestures while speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) summit in Ufa, Russia.