Russia Pledges To Lobby For Renewed Rail Link With Armenia
By Atom Markarian 14/10/2004 10:48

Radio Free Europe, Czech republic
Oct 14 2004

Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin pledged on Wednesday to lobby
for the resumption of Armenia’s rail communication with Russia through
neighboring Georgia and Azerbaijan.

But he did not comment on Moscow’s decision to close its border with
the two ex-Soviet republics which disrupted one of Armenia’s main
supply lines.

“Our delegation will fly from Armenia to Azerbaijan – and then on
to Georgia in order to try to reopen [rail] traffic throughout the
entire territory of the Transcaucasus,” Levitin told a Russian-Armenian
business forum in Yerevan.

“We do realize what a difficult task it is. We must try to solve
it together with you,” he added, referring to the conflicts over
Nagorno-Karabakh and Abkhazia that left Armenia without rail access
to the outside world more than a decade ago.

Armenia has mainly relied since then on Georgia’s Black Sea ports
as well as a Georgian-Russian border crossing to ship and receive
commercial cargos. Last month’s closure of that crossing, announced
immediately after the terrorist attack on a Russian school, thus
further complicated its external trade.

Armenian leaders have tried hard in recent weeks to get the Russians to
lift the blockade amid mounting criticism of Moscow’s policy voiced by
the Armenian press and prominent politicians. The issue was expected
to top the agenda of Levitin’s talks with officials in Yerevan that
began on Wednesday.

Levitin, who co-chairs a Russian-Armenian commission on economic
cooperation with Defense Minister Serzh Sarkisian, did not mention
the border crisis in his speech at the business forum. He instead
criticized the Georgian government for its reluctance to agree to the
reopening of a key railway connecting the South Caucasus to Russia
via the breakaway republic of Abkhazia. Tbilisi links it with the
repatriation of Abkhazia’s ethnic Georgian residents displaced in 1993.

Levitin sought to convince Armenians that Russia too has been
suffering from the closed borders in the volatile region. He said
Russian companies could have used it as a lucrative transit route
for shipping up to 15 million tons of freight to other parts of the
world every year.