In his state-of-the-nation address last month the president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, was full of free-market fire. He berated the assembled lawmakers for the slow pace of economic reforms in what is the most populous of the five Central Asian states and called on them to to push forward with political and economic reforms. He then went on to make what were some of the most radical statements of his career, promising to finally allow convertibility of the soum, the national currency, by 2000. ...
