The UK has proposed on numerous occasions, both bilaterally and with EU partners, to the Government of Uzbekistan that they establish an independent inquiry into the events in Andijan in May 2005. Most recently, Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials raised this issue with the Uzbek Government during a visit to Tashkent in May 2008.
The EU has held two rounds of EU-Uzbekistan experts' meetings on the Andijan events, where the Uzbek side has maintained that these events were a foreign-led conspiracy to exploit religious “extremists” and terrorism in order to effect a “coloured revolution”. The Uzbek authorities have consistently rejected calls for an independent, international enquiry.