Intimations of mortality

摘要

Relations between Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan, and his counterpart in Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazar-bayev, have long been soured by their tussle for regional primacy in Central Asia. But the two ageing autocrats can be pragmatic. So on March 27th Mr Karimov granted an audience to Mr Nazarbayev's foreign minister, Erlan Idrissov, in his residence in the capital Tashkent. The two ageing leaders seem to want to give each other a helping hand. Television footage of the meeting was closely studied. It was the first public glimpse of the 75-year-old Mr Karimov since he was rumoured to have suffered a heart attack on March 19th. His daughter, Gulnara, had taken to Twitter to deny that his health was precarious. But it took his reappearance to quell the speculation.