DUSHANBE, July 4, 2012, Asia-Plus -- Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has sent congratulations to US President Barack H. Obama on the occasion of the 236th US Independence Day, the Tajik official website reports.

In his message, President Rahmon, in particular, stressed that Tajikistan remains adherent to development of bilateral relations with the United States.

Friendly and large-scale cooperation between Tajikistan and the United States is an important component of peace and accord in Central Asia, the message says.  

The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire.

John Adams put forth a resolution earlier in the year which made a formal declaration inevitable. A committee was assembled to draft the formal declaration, to be ready when congress voted on independence.  Adams persuaded the committee to select Thomas Jefferson to compose the original draft of the document, which congress would edit to produce the final version.  The Declaration was ultimately a formal explanation of why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare independence from Great Britain, more than a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War.  The Independence Day of the United States of America is celebrated on July 4, the day Congress approved the wording of the Declaration.