DUSHANBE, November 27, 2012, Asia-Plus  -- Tajik President Emomali Rahmon is expected to meet with Ms. Catherine Ashton, the EU’s High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy also Vie-President of the European Commission, here on November 29.

A new strategy of the European Union for Central Asia as well as freedom of speech and freedom of religion in Tajikistan will be among major topics of their talks. 

EU foreign policy chief will arrive in Dushanbe on a short visit on November 29.  Her visit to Tajikistan will be part of her first major tour of Central Asia that is taking place from November 26 to November 30.

The European Union''s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Catherine Ashton, is making her tour of Central Asia from November 26 to November 30.  In Central Asia, she is meeting with the political leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Born on March 20, 1956, Catherine Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, PC is a British Labor politician who in 2009 became the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Under the Treaty of Lisbon this post is combined with the post of Vice-President of the European Commission.

Her political career began in 1999 when she was created a Life Peer (Baroness Ashton of Upholland) by the Labor Government under which she took on a ministerial position (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State) in the Department for Education and Skills in 2001, and subsequently in the Department for Constitutional Affairs and Ministry of Justice.  She became a Privy Councilor PC in May 2006.

Catherine Ashton was appointed Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Queen''s Privy Council in Gordon Brown’s first Cabinet in June 2007.  As well as Leader of the Lords, she held responsibility in the House of Lords for equalities issues, and she was instrumental in steering the EU''s Treaty of Lisbon through the UK''s upper chamber. In 2008, she succeeded Peter Mandelson as Commissioner for Trade in the European Commission.

In December 2009 she became the first person to take on the newly enlarged High Representative role for the EU that was created by the Treaty of Lisbon