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Uzbekistan has signed deals worth $16 billion with China and $4.6 billion with Russia during their respective leaders' visits to the Central Asian nation for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, the Uzbek Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

Deals with China include the construction of a China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway, while projects with Russia are in machinery, chemicals, petrochemicals and geology sectors, ministry spokesman Yusuf Kabuljanov said.

Russia and China are major investors in Uzbekistan and the former Soviet republic's key trade partners.

They also lead the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a regional body which held a meeting this week in the Uzbek Silk Road city of Samarkand. (Reuters)

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday that now was not the time for war, directly assailing the Kremlin chief in public over the nearly seven-month-long conflict in Ukraine.

Locked in a confrontation with the West over the war, Putin has repeatedly said Russia is not isolated because it can look eastwards to major Asian powers such as China and India.

But at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), concerns spilled out into the open.

"I know that today's era is not an era of war, and I have spoken to you on the phone about this," Modi told Putin at a televised meeting in the ancient Uzbek Silk Road city of Samarkand.

As Modi made the remark, Russia's paramount leader since 1999 pursed his lips, glanced at Modi and then looked down before touching the hair on the back of his head.

Putin told Modi that he understood the Indian leader had concerns about Ukraine, but that Moscow was doing everything it could to end the conflict.

"I know your position on the conflict in Ukraine, the concerns that you constantly express," Putin said. "We will do everything to stop this as soon as possible."

He said Ukraine had rejected negotiations. Ukraine has said it will fight until it drives all Russian troops from its land. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says he will never accept a "peace" that allows Russia to keep Ukrainian land.

The war in Ukraine, triggered when Putin ordered troops to invade on Feb. 24, has killed tens of thousands of soldiers, touched off the worst confrontation with the West since the Cold War and sent the global economy into an inflationary spiral.

India has become Russia's No. 2 oil buyer after China as others have cut purchases following the invasion.

Putin told Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday he understood that Xi had concerns about the situation in Ukraine but praised Beijing's leader for a "balanced" position on the conflict. 

'COLOUR REVOLUTIONS'

Xi, on his first trip outside China since early 2020, did not mention the war in Ukraine in public.

The Chinese leader said the world had entered a new period of turmoil and that partners such as Putin and Central Asian leaders should prevent foreign powers from instigating "colour revolutions".

"The world has entered a new period of turbulent change, we must grasp the trend of the times, strengthen solidarity and cooperation, and promote the construction of a closer community of destiny with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization," Xi said.

"We should support each other's efforts to safeguard security and development interests, prevent external forces from staging colour revolutions, and jointly oppose interference in the internal affairs of other countries under any pretext."

Xi criticised "zero-sum games and bloc politics", a veiled reference to the United States which Beijing has criticised in the past for leaning on allies to counter China's spectacular rise to the status of a superpower in waiting.

Putin has repeatedly said that the United States is plotting so-called "colour revolutions" similar to those which swept established elites from power in places such as Ukraine.

The United States denies such claims and says they show the paranoid nature of Putin's Russia.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in the "Maidan" Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatists fighting Ukraine's armed forces.

China's stability-obsessed Communist Party, which is next month likely to give Xi a third leadership term and cement his place as the country's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, has in the past warned against so called "colour revolutions".

Xi stayed away from a dinner attended by 11 heads of states in line with his delegation's COVID-19 policy, a source in the Uzbek government told Reuters on Friday. (Reuters)

China clashed with the countries in the so-called AUKUS alliance at the U.N. nuclear watchdog on Friday over their plan to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, capping a week in which Beijing has repeatedly railed against the project.

Under the alliance between Washington, London and Canberra announced last year Australia plans to acquire at least eight nuclear submarines that International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi has said will be fuelled by "very highly enriched uranium", suggesting it could be weapons-grade or close to it. 

To date no party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) other than the five countries the treaty recognises as weapons states - the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France - has nuclear submarines. The vessels can stay underwater for longer than conventional ones and are harder to detect.

"The AUKUS partnership involves the illegal transfer of nuclear weapon materials, making it essentially an act of nuclear proliferation," China said in a position paper sent to IAEA member states during this week's quarterly meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors.

Australia says it will be unable and unwilling to use the fuel in its submarines to make nuclear weapons since the vessels will have "welded power units" containing nuclear material that would need chemical processing for use in an atom bomb, and Australia does not have or want facilities that can do that.

The AUKUS countries and the IAEA say the NPT allows so-called marine nuclear propulsion provided necessary arrangements are made with the IAEA.

China disagrees in this case because nuclear material will be transferred to Australia rather than being produced by it. It argues that the IAEA is overstepping its mandate and wants an unspecified "inter-governmental" process to examine the issue at the IAEA instead of leaving it to the agency.

In its seven-page position paper China said AUKUS countries were seeking to take the IAEA "hostage" so it could "whitewash" nuclear proliferation.

Nuclear submarines are a particular challenge because when they are at sea their fuel is beyond the reach of the agency's inspectors who are supposed to keep track of all nuclear material. IAEA chief Grossi has said he is satisfied with the AUKUS countries' transparency so far.

This week's clash has done little to change the way the IAEA approaches the submarine plan, which is still being developed. But it shows China continues to campaign vocally against it, even at the risk of harming its relations with the IAEA.

"It is deeply concerning to hear China calling into question the legitimacy and integrity of the IAEA," an AUKUS statementto the Board of Governors said on Friday. "The AUKUS partners have full confidence in the ability of the IAEA Director General and Secretariat to carry out the Agency's mission and mandate." (Reuters)

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday called on Russia and other members of a regional grouping to support each other in preventing foreign powers from instigating "colour revolutions" - popular uprisings that have shaken former Communist nations - in their countries.

Speaking in Uzbekistan at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a security grouping led by China and Russia, Xi said member countries should support the efforts each other have made to safeguard their own security and development interests.

Xi did not mention Ukraine, which Russia invaded in February in what Russian President Vladimir calls a "special military operation" to protect Russian speakers from "genocide" by Ukraine's government, a claim rejected by Ukraine.

He also said that China will train 2,000 law enforcement personnel from member countries over the next five years and set up a training base focusing on anti-terrorism work.

He invited member countries to sign up to China's Global Security Initiative, a concept he proposed in April which includes the idea that no country should strengthen its own security at the expense of others.

China will provide 1.5 billion yuan ($214 million) worth of grain and other emergency aid to developing countries, Xi said, adding that the Chinese economy is resilient and "full of potential".

China's economy narrowly escaped a contraction in the April-to-June quarter, hobbled by COVID-19 lockdowns of cities, a deepening downturn in the property market and persistently soft consumer spending. (Reuters)