Youngest daughter takes distance from Uzbek president

The youngest daughter of Uzbekistan president Islam Karimov has distanced herself from the policies of her father, who has ruled the ex-Soviet Central Asian state for more than two decades.
Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, 35, Uzbekistan's permanent representative at UNESCO in Paris, in an interview to the BBC Uzbek Service also said that she has not been in contact with her ambitious older sister, Gulnara, who is seen as a possible presidential successor, for 12 years.
"We have never hidden this from anyone... We have neither family nor friendship contacts," she said, in her first open interview to Western media.
"We don't even meet each other for family activities," she said, adding that they have had quite different characters from childhood. "With the years, the difference only grows," she said.

Lola's older sister Gulnara, 40, is known as a pop star and fashion designer and runs jewelry and cosmetics businesses and number of charity funds. Until recently Gulnara was Uzbekistan's permanent representative in the United Nations in Geneva and its ambassador in Spain.
Lola, who has no political or business ambitions, said she thinks Gulnara's chances to be a successor to her father are not great. Unlike Gulnara, she wants to be a devoted mother of her two daughters and a son, according to her comments.

Turning to her father's policies, Lola said she shared the views that "unemployment and lack of opportunities breeds radicalisation of the population."

President Karimov has been criticised for using the pretext of battling religious extremism to silence any dissent.
"These two (unemployment and lack of opportunities) are the main source of the protest among the population, and are strongly linked with the extremism," Lola said.
"And I am confident they cannot be solved by using force," she added.
Asked why she took a French news site, Rue89, to a French court last year, Lola said that it hurts her when she is referred to only as a "dictator's daughter" in the media.
"I know my name outpaces myself, but I want to be seen as a person with her own principles and viewpoint," she said.