US State Secretary to Arrive in Uzbekistan on Sunday - Tashkent

Over four days, at official events in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, Kerry will seek to reassure them they have not been abandoned.

He meets with top officials from all five nations Sunday in the ancient Silk Road city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

Kerry traveled to Austria before arriving in Kyrgyzstan.

However, Washington has concerns over human rights and democracy in Kazakhstan, though Kerry was expected to avoid public criticism and only to raise the concerns in private.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev shake hands before a meeting on Saturday October 31, 2015, in Bishkek.

Kerry, at the start of a tour of the five ex-Soviet republics in Central Asia, described Islamic State, as "a destroyer and it is threatening to take actions against America, Canada and Mexico, against countries all around the world".

At the foreign ministers' meeting, Kerry said: "We should have no doubt that progress in democratic governance leads to gains in every other field about which we're talking". "Therefore, Washington is seriously concerned with not the Middle East militants but Central Asian nationals joining the IS given that Kyrgyzstan has denied the USA its military presence at the Manas airbase".

Kazakhstan has ousted the governor of its central bank after the country's currency, the tenge, lost more than a third of its value in a matter of months. "Unless we invest in our children, unless we open the doors of knowledge to everybody, unless we rise above discrimination and intolerance and work together, then we will steadily grow poorer together".

Rights groups on the outside say it is impossible to determine how many political prisoners the government is holding, while a few have simply disappeared in prisons, cut off from contact with their families and the outside world.

The school is the first university in Central Asia to offer USA accredited degrees in liberal arts programs through its partnership with Bard College in the U.S.

In separate talks with Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov, Kerry brought up the names of several individuals whose fate is considered particularly worrisome, and he urged their release from prison, the official said.

Kerry is part-way through his first tour of all five of the countries, and has come promising investment in education and cooperation on security threats.

But when a Washington Post reporter called out a question about human rights at the conclusion of Kerry's meeting with Karimov, an Uzbek official and an American wearing a "diplomatic security" pin each took her by an arm and firmly guided her from the room.

In its annual human rights report, the State Department lambasted Karimov's government for torturing detainees, rigging elections, imposing widespread religious restrictions and imprisoning people of all faiths.

Certainly, the Islamic State group recruits Central Asians-US officials estimate 500 to 600 Tajiks have joined and Kazakh officials say 200 of their citizens are in Syria.