South Caucasus Countries Discuss Regional Railway
/ Civil Georgia, Tbilisi / 2005-01-10 10:04:53

Visiting Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin will discuss the issue of
restoring the Georgian-Russian railway link via Abkhazia with the Georgian
leadership.
Armenian and Azerbaijani governmental delegations are also expected to join
the talks in Tbilisi on January 10.
Last November, Russian Transport Minister, who visited Georgia and Armenia,
proposed that the countries of the South Caucasus set up a joint
Russian-Georgian-Armenian-Azerbaijani company which would restore traffic on
the Trans-Caucasus Railway, which ceased functioning after conflicts in
Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 90s.
The railway, which stretched more than 2,300 kilometers during Soviet times,
connected Black Sea ports with central Russia, operated passenger services
and handled more than 15 million tons of transit cargo per year, according
to the Russian English-language daily The Moscow Times.
“It is not a simple issue, I mean, we do not face only technical problems
related to restoration of the railway. It is a comprehensive and difficult
political issue,” Lexo Alexishvili, the Georgian Economy Minister, said.

For the past decade the Georgian government’s policy has always linked the
issue of restoring the railway via Abkhazia to the issue of returning the
internally displaced persons to the breakaway region.
There are signs that the Georgian government is now ready to soften its
position, but the final shape of the Tbilisi’s policy towards the issue has
yet to manifest.
“If Georgian custom officers will be deployed at the Georgian-Russian border
[referring to the Abkhaz section of the border] then I see no problem in
restoring the railway connection,” Kakha Bendukidze, the State Minister for
Economic Reform Issues, told reporters on January 9.