Civil Georgia, Georgia
Jan 10 2005

South Caucasus Countries Discuss Regional Railway

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.