[Date] Saturday, Jun. 20th, 1998 (13:00-17:00)
[Place] At Meeting Room, Kanritou Bld. 3F, Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Tohoku University
[Chairman] Yoshihiro Kimura

This meeting was held on Jun. 20th, at Tohoku University, as the joint meeting of the two projects; Research Unit 2 Group B of IAS Project and the Project of the "Social Transformation in Central Asia" organized by Interdisciplinary Research Center of Tohoku University. 14 people attended the meeting, including the members of both projects.

• Dr. Makhamatjon Kasimov (Associate professor at Tashkent State Economic University) gave a lecture titled "The Rural Economy: Its Role in Socio- economic Transformation". Dr. Kasimov focused his analysis on agriculture which is the major industrialized economic sector in Uzbekistan, and reported on the role and influence of rural economy to social-economic transformation. Regarding agriculture, he gave detailed explanations about agricultural production, processing and selling and agricultural business. As for agricultural production, he pointed out the problems that Uzbekistan faces, such as privatization of the means of production, the process of the transformation of the mode of production, financial and investment relations in agriculture, and the distribution system of products.

• Dr. Najia Badykova (Director, Investment Policy and Foreign Economic Relations Division, National Institute of Statistics and Forecasting) gave a lecture titled "Energy Resource Development in Turkmenistan -The Gas Issues in the Caspian Sea Region-". Dr. Badykova explained about the range of resource problems in Central Asia, especially, the legal status of Caspian Sea and related questions, such as oil and gas extraction and pipelines. She also showed in her lecture some the aspects of the political changes in Turkmenistan and mainly the political maps and its extended areas.