By Gram Slattery and Simon Lewis
WASHINGTON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - While the Iran war smolders, Saudi Arabia fights the Houthis and a new rift opens in US-Ukraine relations, Secretary of State Marco Rubio travels on Sunday to Uzbekistan, a nation far removed from the biggest US foreign policy challenges.
The top US diplomat is scheduled to land in Samarkand on Sunday to meet with leaders from the C5+1, a grouping that brings together the United States and the Muslim-majority post-Soviet states of Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
US officials have portrayed resource-rich Central Asia — the region between China, Russia and Iran — as worthy of more attention than it received from US President Donald Trump's predecessors.
Trump hosted C5 leaders at the White House last November, when Kazakhstan agreed to join the Abraham Accords, a series of agreements under which Muslim-majority countries have normalized or deepened relations with Israel. Separately, Trump met with Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev at the United Nations General Assembly last September.
Regional politics aside, the trip fits an emerging pattern in which Rubio often visits regions not at the center of the news cycle, while leaving some more fraught foreign-policy portfolios to other Trump aides, including special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Vice President JD Vance.
For instance, Rubio has not visited Kyiv or Moscow since becoming secretary of state. He was not present for talks between US and Ukrainian officials in Florida earlier this month, when US officials pressed Ukraine to stop hitting Russian refineries. Vance, not Rubio, represented the US in Pakistan during peace talks with Iran in April.
Rubio's previous foreign trip, in early October, took him to Greece, Portugal and Iceland.
Trump administration officials have typically rejected any suggestion that cabinet-level officials should focus their travels on geopolitical capitals and hot spots.
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, for instance, said on X last week that the idea only certain destinations were worthy of visits from secretaries of state "perfectly encapsulates the decadence and degeneracy of the contemporary US foreign policy establishment."
US-RUSSIA RELATIONS LOOM
One Central Asian diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said officials in the region are wondering to what extent the US will continue targeting Russian sanctions evasion. All C5 states, while drawing closer to the US, have deep historical ties with Moscow, and the region has facilitated Russian imports and exports that violate US and European Union sanctions, Western officials say.
In the past, the US has pushed regional states to clamp down on those illicit flows.
But Trump struck a deal with Moscow this month to import Russian diesel, a move to lower domestic fuel prices before the congressional midterm elections. On Friday, Trump waived all provisions of legislation that would have allowed him to slap massive tariffs on some nations that buy significant amounts of Russian crude or otherwise help Moscow evade sanctions. Among the nations that could have been affected, experts have said, are India and Kazakhstan.
India, which Rubio will visit after Uzbekistan, remains the world's No. 2 Russian crude importer after China, despite Trump saying in February that India had agreed to stop buying oil from Russia.
Additional questions hang over a potential trade deal with India and an expansion of the Abraham Accords in Central Asia.
A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, described the trade deal on Friday as "pretty much done," raising the possibility that an agreement could be announced during the Rubio trip.
Separately, the US has talked to additional Central Asian nations about joining the Abraham Accords, Reuters reported last year, conversations that could in theory continue in Samarkand.
More than 200 business executives will accompany Rubio to Uzbekistan, the State Department said. The Central Asian diplomat said the Trump administration has focused its commercial efforts on expanding access to the area's rare earth mineral resources.
The trip to Uzbekistan was largely organized by Sergio Gor, the US ambassador to India, the Central Asian diplomat said. Gor, who was born in Uzbekistan and is a friend of Rubio, also serves as the US special envoy for South and Central Asian affairs.
After Uzbekistan, Rubio will visit the Indian cities of Mumbai and Jamnagar to meet with business leaders, including Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, who earned the Trump administration's favor earlier in the year by backing a new refinery in Texas. Rubio most recently visited India five months ago.
The trip is due to wrap up on Thursday.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery and Simon Lewis; Editing by Sergio Non and Rod Nickel)
