First Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Azimov said Tashkent was tired of being lectured to by the European Union although it was prepared to work with individual states who showed respect.

"We need a reliable market for our raw materials where no one will make strained political claims," Azimov told a conference in Tashkent including foreign diplomats.

Azimov's comments came after Uzbekistan and China inked deals, including $5 billion worth of investment projects, on trade in strategic materials during President Islam Karimov's visit to Beijing earlier this week.

The deals also envisage the construction of a third line on the existing gas pipeline stretching from Turkmenistan to China through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

While selling China uranium, non-ferrous metals, cotton and gas, Uzbekistan is attracting Chinese high-technology to modernise its ageing energy infrastructure and to build new machinery and chemical plants, Azimov said.

But European Union countries are not offering such projects and instead "there have been attempts to blackmail Uzbekistan by some of them ... trying to use sanctions against us," Azimov said.

Relations with Brussels became strained after the EU imposed sanctions when Uzbekistan refused an independent investigation into the quelling of an armed uprising in Andijan in the east of the country in 2005.

Azimov said Uzbekistan will cooperate not with the "abstract EU as a whole but with certain EU countries that respect Uzbekistan on a bilateral basis.

"The EU has to understand that the age of 'teacher and pupil' has gone now," Azimov said, adding that relations with Germany were a good example of cooperation based on mutual respect.

NATO supply truck driver shot dead in Pakistan
Quetta, Pakistan (AFP) April 22, 2011 - Gunmen killed a NATO supply truck driver on Friday after opening fire on a convoy heading to Afghanistan from Pakistan's troubled southwest, officials said.

An unknown number of attackers on motorcycles signalled for the convoy to stop and opened fire after drivers ignored them, before the gunmen fled the scene, local official Mohammad Azam told AFP.

The incident took place in Baghbana town of Khuzdar district, 250 kilometres (155 miles) south of Quetta, the main city of Baluchistan province, Azam said.

"A driver of one NATO supply truck was killed, all other drivers and their helpers remain safe," he said by telephone.

NATO supply trucks and oil tankers are targets of frequent attacks blamed on insurgents attempting to disrupt supplies for more than 130,000 international troops fighting in Afghanistan.

Most supplies and equipment required by coalition troops in Afghanistan are shipped through neighbouring Pakistan, although US troops increasingly use alternative routes through Central Asia.

Baluchistan -- which also borders Iran -- is torn by Islamist militancy, sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiite Muslims, and an insurgency by rebels seeking political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region's natural resources.

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